Care Quality Commission (CQC) assessment
The Birmingham Adult Social Care (ASC) directorate was assessed by our regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), in 2023 and 2025.
Both inspections included on-site visits.
CQC inspection – 2025
After the pilot inspection in 2023, the CQC returned to inspect us again.
This inspection was:
- part of the full inspection programme for all ASC directorates in England
- within CQC's stated 2-year return inspection period for pilot councils
We submitted our self-assessment document to the CQC in autumn 2025, and the assessment ended with an on-site visit in December 2025.
View a summary of Birmingham's CQC self-assessment.
The outcome
The CQC announced the assessment outcome in May 2026.
We retained our 'good' rating.
Stuart Lackenby, Executive Director of Adult Social Care and Health said:
“We are incredibly proud to have been assessed again as ‘good’ by the care quality commission.
However, we recognise that we still have work to do to improve our services. Sometimes we don’t offer people support that meets our own expectations, people can wait too long for our intervention, and we don’t get everything right.
The recognition in the report of the hard work by all our staff and partners is important as they make a difference everyday supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our city, sometimes in difficult circumstances. Feedback from our staff helped contribute to CQCs understanding of what we do well. This has been a challenging time for our city, but we are very proud of what we have achieved and will build on this positive result to continue to improve the experiences of the people we support.”
View the CQC assessment report from May 2026.
CQC inspection – 2023
This inspection was part of the pilot inspection programme.
We were awarded a 'good' rating. This was a provisional rating because the assessment was part of the pilot assessment programme.
Find full details of the assessment on the CQC’s website.
The pilot
The CQC chose Birmingham ASC directorate as one of 5 social care authorities in England to pilot the new CQC Assessment Framework before it was rolled out to all local councils delivering adult social care services over the next 2 years.
The pilot helped the CQC:
- develop their approach to assessing adult social care services
- test their methodology
The full assessment report detailed many areas of strength for the directorate.
The assessment also identified some areas of weakness.
These matched areas that we had identified for improvement, and we put plans in place to improve them.
Page last updated: 15 May 2026
