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F247

Accountability for quality accounts

Mid Staffs Inquiry · Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · Issued 6 February 2013 · Addressed to: Healthcare providers

Government responseDepartment of Health and Social Care: Accepted (Nov 2013)

DeliveryDHSC and NHS England say completed (Feb 2026)Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (Feb 2015)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

Healthcare providers should be required to lodge their quality accounts with all organisations commissioning services from them, Local Healthwatch, and all systems regulators.

Mid Staffs Inquiry, Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · 6 Feb 2013 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In September 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England stated that the measure was implemented, noting that regulations require quality accounts to be published annually and emailed to NHS England or the department, while providers are advised to share them with commissioners, local Healthwatch, and scrutiny committees (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team found that "it is unclear whether providers were required to provide quality accounts directly to systems regulators" (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

About this summary
This recommendation applies across many organisations. The record above reflects central policy activity; adoption in individual organisations may vary.

Report-level response context

Government responded via "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (2014), a single document covering all 290 recommendations with a blanket acceptance. Individual recommendation responses were not broken out.

Government response

●Department of Health and Social Care · Accepted · 19 Nov 2013

Speaker not recorded. Source: Department of Health, Hard Truths: the Journey to Putting Patients First, volume 2 (Cm 8777-II), November 2013

Accepted.
The National Health Service (Quality Accounts Regulations) 2010 require that by 30 June following the end of the reporting period, Quality Accounts must be published by making them electronically available on the NHS Choices website or another website if that website is not available at the time of publication.
Prior to publication, and within 30 days of 1 April following the end of the reporting period, each provider is required to make a copy of the draft Quality Account available to the appropriate Local Heathwatch organisation, Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Clinical Commissioning Group.
Where 50% or more of the relevant health services that the provider directly provides or sub- contracts during the reporting period are under contracts or arrangements with NHS England the provider must make the draft Quality Account available to NHS England rather than a Clinical Commissioning Group.

Response document: Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First. Volume Two of the Government Response to the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: Response to the Inquiry's Recommendations

Site note: This is volume two of "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777-II), the government's response to the Inquiry's 290 recommendations, published by the Department of Health on GOV.UK on 19 November 2013 and dated to that day here. The PDF the row links to is the accessible edition, whose title page reads "January 2014". The Department of Health has been the Department of Health and Social Care since January 2018. The volume says it includes accounts from each of the national organisations the recommendations name, but it does not mark which passage each organisation wrote, so every row is filed under the Department that published it.

Delivery

●DHSC and NHS England say completed · 27 Feb 2026

The National Health Service (Quality Accounts) Regulations 2010 state that Quality Accounts (QA) must be published by June 30 each year following the end of the reporting period, and submitted via email to either NHS England (for NHS providers) or DHSC (for independent providers).

Providers are also advised to share their QA with commissioners, their local HealthWatch, Overview and Scrutiny Committees and Health and Wellbeing Boards.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025)

Site note: DHSC and NHS England's own account of progress, supplied to the Thirlwall Inquiry in September 2024 and printed in the Inquiry legal team's Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025, published 27 February 2026). It is not a finding of the Inquiry. Their reviewed extent of implementation reads “Implemented – Closed”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 247, PDF page 556-557.

●Department of Health and Social Care says in progress · 11 Feb 2015

All Quality Accounts have to be lodged with NHS Choices which is accessible to all stakeholders. The NHS England review of Quality Accounts (see Rec 37) has also recommended an improvement in the functionality of NHS Choices which has taken effect in 2014/15.

From: Culture Change in the NHS supporting Annex (annex to Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries)

Site note: This is the supporting annex published on 11 February 2015 with "Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries" (Cm 9009), attached to the GOV.UK page as "Culture change in the NHS supporting annex". The annex has no title page; that title is GOV.UK's and the PDF's own. Its table has four columns (No., Recommendation, Hard Truths Government response, Progress update), and the row carries the Progress update cell. No column says which organisation wrote an update, so the row is filed under the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care), which published it.

Site note: The Inquiry addressed this recommendation to healthcare providers, not to the Department of Health. The annex gives this update in the Department's publication and does not say who wrote it, so the row is the Department's report of the progress made on it.

What other bodies have found

In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.

●Thirlwall Inquiry legal team · 15 May 2024

This recommendation was accepted by the Government.

In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government referred to the National Health Service (Quality Accounts Regulations) 2010, as requiring Quality Accounts to be published on the NHS Choices website and provided to the local Healthwatch, scrutiny committee and clinical commissioning group. In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that quality accounts on the NHS Choices website were accessible to all stakeholders.

It is unclear whether providers were required to provide quality accounts directly to systems regulators.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024)

Site note: The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team's own notes on implementation, from its Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024). The review does not colour its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green; it leaves the cell uncoloured where a recommendation was rejected, where evidence of implementation was insufficient, or where steps had been taken but implementation was not yet complete. Table row: section 16.2 No. 247, PDF page 513.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.