The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care services in England. Inspectors from the CQC visited us in June 2025 for a routine local authority inspection to look at how adult social care is arranged and planned.
The CQC has a new duty under the Care Act (2014) to assess how local authorities work with their communities and partners to meet their responsibilities. This includes promoting the wellbeing and independence of working age disabled adults, older people, and their unpaid carers to reduce their need for formal support where appropriate. Where support is needed, the local authority should provide people with choice and control of how their care needs are met.
When the assessors visited us they looked at 9 areas spread across 4 themes to assess how well we're meeting our responsibilities and fulfilling our duties under the Care Act.
The CQC found that the adult social care services provided by us require improvement. Read the CQC’s Local Authority Assessment Report.
We take the findings of this assessment very seriously. People in the city of York deserve timely, high-quality care and support, and we've already started making changes to ensure this happens.
We're underway with action to improve access and responsiveness across these areas. For example, we're looking to improve:
- systems and processes to manage safeguarding
- residents’ access to information and advice, in particular about direct payments
- services for supported living, specialist dementia care, mental health support, carer breaks and discharge from mental health hospital
Areas of good practice were also found by the assessment team. They include how we tackle digital exclusion through our ‘Digital Friendly York’ partnership and strategy. This supported people in York to get online and learn skills using the internet. People could be offered reused equipment and learning free of charge. In addition, people with experiences of dementia had been involved in developing the city’s dementia strategy. They were proud of the work taking place as a result of it, including the support for people waiting for diagnosis, and support to enable people to live independently.
Read the York City Council's response to the CQC report.
Our improvement plan is being developed at pace and will be supported by an independent improvement partner. We’re also in the process of creating an improvement board. Central to this development will be representatives from our partners and care providers, as well as people who use services and have lived experience.
We'll be working with the Department of Health and Social Care to report in on progress around the improvements.
Find out more about how to provide comments on this report and share your feedback online.
Also see
Adult Social Care Community Team
Telephone: 01904 555111, Textphone: 07534 437804
Adult Social Care Emergency Duty Team
Contact the Emergency Duty Team for assistance.