Recommendation F154: Medical training
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
The Care Quality Commission and Monitor should develop practices and procedures with training regulators and bodies responsible for the commissioning and oversight of medical training to coordinate their oversight of healthcare organisations which provide regulated training.
In brief (written by this site)
In commentary provided in September 2024 and published in February 2026, DHSC and NHS England reported that Monitor and Health Education England now form part of the latter organisation, referring to separate responses regarding regulator partnerships and the training provider quality framework (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted in May 2024 that the Care Quality Commission had agreed joint operational protocols with the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, as well as a September 2014 memorandum of understanding with the Healthcare Professions Council (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. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
Accepted
The Care Quality Commission and the General Medical Council have developed an operation protocol which describes when and how to share information on emerging and urgent concerns (for example about individual doctors, systems and environments) as well as processes for the routine sharing of information, local liaison meetings any on-going activities and risk summits. There is also a process for deciding when joint planned inspections are required. The Care Quality Commission is working on developing operational protocols with the Healthcare Professions Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Information from third parties such as General Medical Council and Royal Colleges is a potential trigger for regulatory intervention in Monitor’s Risk Assessment Framework and information and any identified concerns are shared with the Quality Surveillance Groups of which the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council are also members of regional the Quality Surveillance Groups.
How this response relates to the recommendation
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.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
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.
Delivery
DHSC and NHS England state no delivery position (27 February 2026)
Monitor and Health Education England now form part of NHS England.
Please see our response to recommendation 152 above for detail on the Quality Framework for training providers and the NHS Long-term workforce Plan.
Please see response to recommendation 35 for how NHS England work in partnership with regulators
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 “Superseded”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 154, PDF page 497-498.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
Memoranda of Understanding are being developed and revised with other strategic partner organisations, often supported by joint operating protocols. For example, a joint working protocol has recently been established with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and will be embedded during 2015. The Care Quality Commission is close to updating its joint working arrangements with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Health and Care Professionals Council, and the Care Quality Commission intelligence teams are liaising with the Health and Care Professionals Council on routine information sharing.
Information from third parties such as the General Medical Council and Royal Colleges is a potential trigger for regulatory intervention in Monitor’s Risk Assessment Framework and information and any identified concerns are shared with the quality surveillance groups of which the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council are also members of regional the quality surveillance groups.
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 the Care Quality Commission, 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 its January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government referred to joint operational protocols between the General Medical Council and the Care Quality Commission and between the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Care Quality Commission. The Government also referred to efforts to agree operational protocols between the Care Quality Commission and the Healthcare Professions Council. A Memorandum of Understanding between the Care Quality Commission and the Healthcare Professions Council was entered into in September 2014.
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. 154, PDF page 465.
Source
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health and Social Care
Response, delivery statement - DHSC and NHS England
Delivery statement - Thirlwall Inquiry legal team
Finding