Rated “Good” in 2018? The CQC is coming back — and it’s your premises paperwork they’ll check first

For years, the safest place in primary care regulation was a “Good” rating and a quiet file. GP practices carry the oldest ratings of any CQC sector — an average age of five and a half years as of mid-2024, according to the data annex published alongside the Dash review. Inspections across all sectors fell 57% between 2019 and 2023. Whole partnerships have formed, merged and retired without seeing an inspector.

That era ended in March 2026. The CQC’s “Returning to Good and Outstanding” programme is now visiting practices rated Good or Outstanding whose last report was published between 2017 and 2022 — with site visits scheduled through September and October 2026 and, in the words of CQC’s director of primary care, no specific end date: it will run “for the foreseeable.”

What they’re checking: the evidence that decays silently

The programme assesses ten non-clinical quality statements — safe environments, staffing, infection prevention and control, governance. In other words: the areas where evidence rots quietly over four to nine years while everyone’s attention is rightly on patients.

Recent inspection findings show exactly where practices get caught. First Practice Management’s analysis of reports published in February 2026 found legionella checks “continue to be a very common area where practices are not doing enough,” IPC audits that missed real hazards, and policies still containing “insert practice name here.”

And the tail risk is real. Glenroyd Medical in Blackpool went from Outstanding straight to Inadequate and into special measures — with findings that included missing fire warning signs, fire strips not installed in doorframes, untested electrical equipment, unclear evacuation procedures and incomplete recruitment checks. Not clinical failures. Premises and paperwork failures.

Why this lands on the practice manager’s desk

Every one of the ten quality statements resolves, in practice, to a question a practice manager must answer with a document:

• When was the last legionella risk assessment, and where are the weekly flushing and monthly temperature records?
• Where are the fire alarm test logs, the PAT testing records, the evacuation procedure?
• Where’s the cleaning schedule, the IPC audit, and the actions that came out of it?
• Are staff files complete — DBS, references, immunisations, training matrix?

If the honest answer involves three ring binders, a shared drive and one person’s memory, the visit will be a bad fortnight even if the practice is fundamentally sound. The RCGP has called inspection preparation “highly and unnecessarily stressful” — and it’s the reconstruction of years of evidence that makes it so.

The alternative: evidence that accumulates instead of being assembled

FitForAudit GP is built around the CQC’s assessment framework. Routine checks — fridge temperatures, fire tests, legionella flushing, cleaning sign-offs — are logged as they happen, with timestamps and photo evidence, and the platform assembles them into inspection-ready audit packs mapped to the framework, ready to hand over when the CQC or the ICB asks. Deployment takes less than a day, and customers typically recover 5–10 hours of staff time a week.

The point isn’t software for its own sake. It’s that when the CQC letter arrives, “preparation” should mean printing a pack, not a month of archaeology.

The takeaway

The CQC has named the practices it’s visiting (last reported 2017–2022), named what it’s checking (ten non-clinical quality statements), and declined to name an end date. That’s about as much warning as a regulator ever gives. The practices that will barely notice the visit are the ones whose evidence has been building itself since long before the letter.

Sources: GOV.UK Dash review data annex (2024); Management in Practice (May 2026); First Practice Management (Feb 2026); CQC press release, Glenroyd Medical; RCGP (Nov 2024).