What is the CQC?

What the CQC does

The Care Quality Commission is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. It was established by the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and is sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Care, but it makes its own regulatory decisions.

Its work falls into four parts:

• Registration. Any organisation that carries on a regulated activity in England, such as treatment of disease, disorder or injury, must be registered. Doing so without registration is a criminal offence.
• Monitoring. The CQC collects information about registered services, including notifications from providers and feedback from the public.
• Assessment and rating. It assesses services, publishes reports and gives most services a rating.
• Enforcement. Where standards are not met, it can act.

The CQC and the GMC are different

NHS GPs often think of the CQC as something the practice deals with. In private practice it becomes your concern directly, because the legal entity you set up is what registers.

	GMC	CQC
Regulates	Individual doctors	Organisations providing regulated activities
Covers	The whole UK	England only
What it checks	Your fitness to practise, licence and revalidation	Whether the service is safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led
Sanctions	Conditions, suspension or erasure from the register	Conditions on registration, suspension or cancellation, and prosecution

A private GP running their own service in England usually needs both. Whether your particular set-up needs CQC registration is covered in do I need to be registered with the CQC?

The fundamental standards

Part 3 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 sets out the standards every registered provider must meet. The CQC calls them the fundamental standards. Those most relevant to a private GP service are:

• person-centred care (regulation 9) and dignity and respect (regulation 10)
• need for consent (regulation 11)
• safe care and treatment (regulation 12), which covers risk assessment, medicines and infection control
• safeguarding (regulation 13)
• premises and equipment (regulation 15)
• receiving and acting on complaints (regulation 16)
• good governance (regulation 17), including audit and accurate records
• staffing and fit and proper persons employed (regulations 18 and 19)
• duty of candour (regulation 20)
• display of ratings (regulation 20A).

These regulations are the legal baseline. The CQC’s assessment framework describes what good looks like on top of them.

Ratings

The CQC assesses services against five key questions: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led? Private doctor services, including private GP practices, clinics and online primary care, get a rating for each key question and an overall rating on a four-point scale: outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Once you have a rating, regulation 20A requires you to display it. You need a sign at each location and the rating, with a link to the report, on your website. The CQC provides posters and a website widget for this. It can prosecute a failure to display a rating without first issuing a warning notice.

How the CQC decides when to assess you, and what happens during an assessment, is covered in will the CQC want to inspect me?

Enforcement

If a provider breaches the regulations, the CQC can use civil powers or criminal ones. Civil powers include warning notices, imposing or varying conditions on registration, suspending registration and cancelling it. Criminal powers include fixed penalty notices and prosecution for specific offences. Examples are carrying on a regulated activity without registration, failing to keep your statement of purpose up to date, failing to make required notifications and failing to display a rating.

What it costs

There is no separate application fee, but every registered provider pays an annual fee. Private doctors and clinics fall into the independent healthcare, community healthcare fee category. At the time of review the fee was £1,867 a year for one location, and more for several locations. Check the CQC fees pages for the current figure.

Why it matters for a private GP

Registration is a legal requirement for most private GP services, but it also has practical value:

• A structure for running a safe service. The regulations cover the things a new provider can overlook, such as recruitment checks, significant events, complaints and audit. Working through them before you open is a good test of whether you are ready.
• Something patients can check. Anyone can look up your registration and rating on the CQC website. A good rating displayed on your website is independent evidence of quality, which self-promotion cannot provide.
• Credibility with partners. Laboratories, insurers, private hospitals and NHS colleagues may ask whether you are registered.

A rating can also go the other way. Reports are public, so a requires improvement or inadequate rating is visible to every prospective patient until you are reassessed.

Changes under way

Since 2024 the CQC has used a single assessment framework built on quality statements. Following independent reviews, it consulted in 2025 and 2026 on replacing it with separate frameworks for each sector, including one for primary care and community services. It said it would publish the final frameworks in 2026 and start using them at the end of the year. At the time of review the single framework was still in use, so check the CQC website for the current position.

In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

The CQC does not regulate services outside England. Private GP services register with Healthcare Improvement Scotland in Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales in Wales, and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) in Northern Ireland. Each has its own scope, standards and fees.