Recommendation F257: Role of the Health and Social Care Information Centre
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
The Information Centre should be tasked with the independent collection, analysis, publication and oversight of healthcare information in England, or, with the agreement of the devolved governments, the United Kingdom. The information functions previously held by the National Patient Safety Agency should be transferred to the NHS Information Centre if made independent.
In brief (written by this site)
In February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England referred to their response to recommendation 252 (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the government had accepted the recommendation in principle by making the Health and Social Care Information Centre an executive non-departmental public body, but had declined to transfer former National Patient Safety Agency functions (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024). Earlier, the department reported in February 2015 that work to re-commission the National Reporting and Learning System was underway (Department of Health, Feb 2015).
Sources
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 in principle.
We accept that the Health and Social Care Information Centre should be made more independent. In April 2013, the Health and Social Care Information Centre was established as an Executive Non Departmental Public Body to further ensure its independence in the undertaking of its key functions.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012, requires the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish and operate a system for the collection or analysis of information in connection with the provision of health services and adult social care in England. As such, its work includes the publication of more than 130 statistical publications annually; providing a range of specialist data services; managing informatics projects and programmes and developing and assuring national systems against appropriate contractual, clinical safety and information standards.
The Informatics Services Commissioning Group, established in 2013, has been set up to enable the Health and Social Care Information Centre to become the focal point for data collected at the national level so that it increasingly becomes a checkpoint for those seeking new data collections.
At this time, we do not accept that this should include the information functions previously held by the NPSA. Following the abolition of the National Patient Safety Agency, its key functions were transferred to NHS England in 2012 including functions relating to the National Reporting and Learning System. The operational management of the National Reporting and Learning System was transferred for two years from 1 April 2012 to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Given the recent transfer of these functions, the Government stated in its initial response to The Inquiry, Patients First and Foremost (Department of Health, 2013), that reallocating these functions at this stage would be unnecessarily disruptive. We will keep this decision under review.
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)
Please see our response to recommendation 252 above.
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. 257, PDF page 562-563.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
Work to re-commission the National Reporting and Learning System is underway in NHS England with ongoing stakeholder and expert engagement being used to inform the design phase. The options development and appraisal will be progressed in Q3 and Q4 of 2014/15 with the revised design confirmed by the end of March 2015, subject to approvals. The procurement of the new system will then progress over the 2015/16 financial year.
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 Health and Social Care Information Centre (later NHS Digital), 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 in principle by the Government.
In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government accepted that the Health and Social Care Information Centre should be made more independent, and in April 2013 established it as an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body. The Government referred to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 requiring the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish and operate a system for the collection or analysis of information in connection with the provision of health services and adult social care in England.
The Government did not accept the recommendation that information functions previously held by the National Patient Safety Agency should be transferred to the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Instead, the key functions of the National Safety Patient Safety relating to the National Reporting and Learning System were transferred to NHS England.
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. 257, PDF page 517-518.
Source
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