FOI request reveals 2000+ care homes without a registered manager

A charity’s investigation for the BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours has found that more than 2,000 care homes in England have no registered manager.

Figures obtained by the Action on Elder Abuse charity under Freedom of Information legislation from the Care Quality Commission showed that no-one was named as being in charge of 2,200 out of the 24,000 homes in England.

Homes should have registered managers legally responsible for running each home.

Gary Fitzgerald, chief executive of Action on Elder Abuse, told the programme that the figures painted a “frightening picture of the state of residential care in England”.

He added: “The registered manager holds a crucial role in establishing and maintaining standards of quality and to have so many homes with requirements of this type is appalling.”

Many care home providers now questioned whether the CQC was fit for purpose, Fitzgerald added.

Oliver Thomas, director of Bupa Care Homes UK, which has around 265 care homes in England said: “The CQC system can be slow to register managers who have been in post for a while.

“I am still seeing registrations being returned to me from October last year.”

Care home provider Barchester told the programme that in some instances it had taken the CQC more than five months to register a manager. It currently has 29 posts awaiting registration.

CQC's operations director did not accept delays on the regulator’s part were the reason for so many unregistered managers.

“It is the provider's responsibility to have a registered manager. It is the CQC's responsibility to make sure registration is timely and robust,” Amanda Sherlock said.

"Last October, at the point of transition into the new process, there were some backlogs. We have worked very hard to clear them and are now processing the vast majority of applications within eight weeks.”

And it appears the new registration process has had other unintended consequences.

Action on Elder Abuse also said the number of CQC inspections of care homes had fallen significantly from 10,856 in 2009-10 to only 3,806 in 2010-11.

Sherlock said the regulator had had to divert resources into the “very challenging” re-registration process, but inspections were now increasing.

“I'm absolutely committed to achieving a figure of a 1,000 a month by the end of this financial year,” she said.

Mark Smulian