Introduction
Anti-racism is the actions taken to confront and change the systems and behaviours that create and sustain racism, requiring commitment, accountability, and measurable progress.
CQC’s commitment to anti-racism builds on years of collaboration, challenge, and advocacy from colleagues, communities, and partners, including our Race Equality Network. This statement and research – informed by people who use services, communities, providers and our colleagues – is the continuation of that collaborative spirit.
CQC recognises that we have not always been confident in recognising racism or speaking about it with clarity. This statement signals a commitment to action, accountability and continuous learning, and is intentionally ambitious, honest, and focused on change.
We remain grateful to members of the Co-Design Group for the time, emotional labour, expertise and honesty they brought to this work. Their contributions have played an important role in helping to shape our understanding of racism in health and social care and our commitments towards becoming an anti-racist organisation.
Our statement
Racism harms people from ethnic minority groups on the basis of their colour, nationality, race or ethnicity. Racism is present in organisations and systems, policies and processes, attitudes and behaviour in society and can affect people’s health, wellbeing, and trust in services. Because of racism, people from ethnic minority groups often have a poorer experience of care, find it harder to access services and have worse outcomes from their care.
This is unfair and goes against our role as a regulator. We believe everyone has the right to safe, respectful and high-quality care.
Our commitment to anti-racism
In September 2024, we committed to becoming an anti-racism organisation.
Being an anti-racism organisation means:
- actively removing racism from our systems and ways of working
- challenging racism when we see it
- making changes, not just statements
We will look at how race and ethnicity link with other protected equality characteristics, for example people’s religion, age, disability, gender identity, sex or sexual orientation. When these factors combine, this intersection can create more inequality, and we must understand this to act fairly.
This statement explains what we will do as an employer and a regulator of health and social care services.
What this means for the public
We will:
- challenge racism wherever it appears in health and social care
- take action to address the root causes of racial inequality
- be open about the steps we are taking and the progress we are making
We will not ignore or underplay racism. We will promote anti‑racist practice across the health and care system.
What this means for CQC colleagues
Our staff are essential to our work.
We will:
- build anti-racism into our policies, leadership and daily practice
- work to be diverse and inclusive at every level of CQC
- provide a safe and healthy working environment
All staff should feel:
- confident to speak up about racism
- supported when they raise concerns
We will have clear processes to deal with racism and take concerns seriously.
What this means for providers
We will hold ourselves and the services we regulate to account.
We will:
- include anti-racism in how we inspect and assess services
- treat it as a key part of what good quality care looks like
- work with others, including experts by experience, to understand real-life experiences of care (an expert by experience is someone who uses their own lived experience of health or care services to share their experiences).
This work should lead to better and fairer care for everyone.
Accountability and monitoring progress
Senior leaders at CQC are responsible for driving change. All staff are expected to learn about anti-racism practice and apply this learning in their role.
We will set clear actions and targets, track our progress over time and regularly review and improve what we do. Our work will be shaped by research and evidence, feedback from colleagues and lived experience from people affected by racial inequality. We know meaningful change takes time and this work can be challenging.
We will be open about our progress. We will listen, learn and act.
Our long-term commitment
This statement sets out our ambition to be an anti-racism organisation.
We are committed at every level of CQC to taking action, learning and improving and reducing racial inequalities in health and social care.
Our work so far
This statement re-iterates our position as we continue to build on existing work. As a public body, we are already required to address racism through our statutory duties. For example, the Equality Act 2010 Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and our regulations within the Health and Social Care Act 2008.
- We have established leadership, accountability, and governance structures. Including an Executive Sponsor for Equality Objectives and Health Inequalities and internal anti-racism. Executive team members set SMART anti-racism objectives and there are directorate-level equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) goals. Progress is monitored through annual Board reporting, including use of the Workforce Race Equality Standard.
- All colleagues have undertaken anti-racism learning, which is being developed to include antisemitism and Islamophobia. Targeted learning has been delivered to the Board and Executive Committee, including learning with a focus on antisemitism. Anti-racism principles have also been integrated into some core tools and processes, including equality impact assessments and incident reporting guidance.
- We have begun embedding anti-racism within regulation, with programmes addressing disparities (for example, maternity, workforce equality) and within operational guidance such as the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework.
- We have also emphasised insight, evidence, and research. This includes research on Black men’s mental health and tackling workforce equality diversity and inclusion through regulation. Evidence gathering through Mental Health Act reviews about the implementation of PCREF is helping to build a robust evidence base for change.
- Finally, we are influencing the wider system and supporting sector improvement. This includes co-designing Joint Regulator Principles for workforce race equality and using our annual major reports, to explicitly highlight and address the impact of racism across sectors.
We will go further by using our remit and unique position to more consistently name, understand, and challenge racism within our systems and regulatory practice, helping to address the root causes of racialised health inequalities and improve care for everyone. This includes working in partnership where change goes beyond our powers, building on collaboration with organisations such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the NHS Race and Health Observatory (RHO), and other regulators.