Complaints
Find out how to share concerns and complaints about a social care service, your council, independent healthcare services, the NHS or us.
We are the independent regulator for all health and social care services in England, whether they are provided by the NHS, local authorities, private companies or voluntary organisations. We also protect the rights of people detained under the Mental Health Act.
Even though we cannot investigate your individual complaint for you we would like to hear about your experience. This is because we believe involving people who use services in everything we do will help improve them for everyone. We therefore encourage people to share information with us.
Complaining about the care you have received
Since April 2009 there has been a common approach to dealing with complaints across health and social care. This gives organisations the flexibility to deal with complaints effectively and to use people’s experience to make services better.
Complaints are an important indicator of the standard of care provided and when they are positively resolved, they lead to improvement in services.
In accordance with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the Local Authority Social Services and NHS Complaints regulations 2009, CQC cannot consider individual complaints about the services we regulate.
The only exception to this is when complaints involve the Mental Health Act.
How to raise concerns and make complaints
The way in which you should go about complaining about the service you have received depends on which part of the care sector was involved.
1. Care homes and services
If you would like to make a complaint about a care home or service you should contact your provider in the first instance.
Complain about a care home or service: find out what to do if you are unhappy about your social care service.
2. Independent healthcare services
If you like to raise a concern or complaint about independent healthcare services, you should contact them in the first instance.
Raise a concern or complaint about independent healthcare services: find out what to do if you're unhappy with the way a service has dealt with your complaint.
3. Complaints about the NHS
If you would like to complain about the NHS you need to contact the NHS directly.
Complain about the NHS: The process for this has changed on 1 April 2009 and CQC are not involved in this process.
4. Complain about CQC
We aim to get things right first time. If you believe we have got something wrong, please tell us and we will try to sort things out quickly.
Complain about CQC: What to do if you want to make a complaint about us.
5. How to complain if you've been detained under the Mental Health Act
We have specific duties to look after complaints from people detained under the Mental Health Act, find out how to complain.
Complain about health services which look after people detained under the Mental Health Act
