Taking action

Page last updated: 8 September 2023
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Everybody has the right to receive safe, high-quality care. If we find that care has fallen short of this, we use our powers to take action against those responsible.

Why we take action

We use our powers to:

  • Protect you from harm and make sure you receive care that meets the standards you have a right to expect.
  • Make sure services improve if the standard of care they provide has fallen below acceptable levels.
  • Hold care providers and managers to account for failures in how care is provided.

What action we take depends on how the problems we've identified affect the people who use the service and how serious they are.

Our powers

The action we can take includes:

  • Using requirement notices or warning notices to set out what improvements the care provider must make and by when.
  • Making changes to a care provider's registration to limit what they may do, for example by imposing conditions for a given time.
  • Placing a provider in special measures, where we closely supervise the quality of care while working with other organisations to help them improve within set timescales.
  • Hold the care provider to account for their failings by:
    • issuing simple cautions
    • issuing fines
    • prosecuting cases where people are harmed or placed in danger of harm.

Find out about prosecutions we've brought

If we reach a final decision not to prosecute, you may be able to ask us to review this decision.

Ask us to review a decision not to prosecute

Keeping you informed

We will include details of the action we take in our inspection reports and clearly show on the care provider's pages on our website when we are using our powers.