Inexperienced inspectors were the reason why Bath & North East Somerset Council was rated “requires improvement” for how it meets its care responsibilities, local authority care chiefs have said.
The Care Quality Commission inspected the council between April and September 2024, and in January published a rating of “requires improvement”.
But now the council has insisted that it was the quality of the inspection which was poor, not its care services.
Suzanne Westhead, the council’s director of adult social care, told the local authority’s health scrutiny panel on 14th April that of the nine inspectors sent by the CQC, only one had experience with adult social care.
She said: “We needed to explain everything to them because they didn’t understand how adult social care worked.”
A paper which went before the committee said she had written twice to the CQC’s chief inspector over the “poor inspection process and inexperienced inspectors”.
The council said the CQC had made 75 factual errors in its report, 56 of which it agreed to change. But it refused to change the “requires improvement” rating.
The council cabinet member for adult services, Alison Born, told the panel: “We were disappointed that the corrections to the narrative had very little impact on the scoring or our rating of “requires improvement”.
“We remain concerned that some significant inaccuracies remain in the published report.”
Ms Westhead said she had asked the CQC for a review, but was told it could only be done on certain grounds. Inspectors are expected to be back again next year.
Ms Westhead said: “That’s why we are working so hard to improve our performance.”
But she said it was “quite difficult” to work out how to improve services which the council already understood to be good.
Ms Born said that the CQC report suggested the council’s hospital discharge performance was not as good as it had been, despite performing better than other local authorities and having been commended for it by the RUH.
Ms Westhead said she was adamant that the council had “great staff”. She said they had been disappointed with the “requires improvement” rating.
The inspection was carried out shortly after the council took adult social care services, which had been contracted to care provider HCRG, back in-house to be run directly by the council.
Assessments of how local authorities meet their care duties is a new responsibility of the CQC and Bath & North East Somerset Council was one of the first councils inspected.
Councillor Born said she thought the CQC had learnt from issues raised by Bath & North East Somerset Council and other councils among the first to be inspected.
Ms Westhead said that the inspectors were now more experienced. She said: “It’s just unfortunate that we were early.”
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
