Care Quality Commission charging fees
All health and adult social care services that carry out activities that the CQC regulates must pay them annual fees. What they charge is set out every year in their fees scheme. When these charges change, they carry out a consultation to make sure that care providers, organisations that represent them and the public have an opportunity to comment on what changes they are proposing.
Their work is partly funded by grant-in-aid – money that comes from the Government. However, government policy for fee-setting regulators is that chargeable costs must become fully funded by their fees – which means that they must increase fees and reduce reliance on government funding.
This year, the first and main proposal in the fees consultation is to achieve full chargeable cost recovery over a defined timescale (this excludes dental care providers). The CQC are asking people to tell them whether they think this timescale should be:
- Two years, between 2016 and 2018.
- Four years, between 2016 and 2020.
They are also asking if there is a different way that they should aim to achieve full chargeable cost recovery.
The second proposal is about fees for dental care providers. They already recover full chargeable costs in the dental sector and they expect those costs to remain the same over 2016/17, after which they are expected to fall. They are holding dental fees at their current level in 2016/17 and propose to decrease charges in 2017/18.
You can read the proposals in detail by downloading the consultation document at www.cqc.org.uk/content/fees-care-providers-your-views and use the online form to offer your feedback.
