Recommendation F259: 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, in consultation with the Department of Health, the NHS Commissioning Board and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, should develop a means of publishing more detailed breakdowns of clinically related complaints.
In brief (written by this site)
In September 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England reported that NHS Digital publishes data on written complaints across primary and secondary care in England, explaining that collections shifted from quarterly reporting between 2015-16 and 2021-22 to an annual basis from 2022-23 (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Previously, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted in May 2024 that the government had accepted the recommendation and that quarterly complaints data were being published (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 Department of Health will work with the Health and Social Care Information Centre to put complaints data into the existing NHS electronic data collection system, better enabling comparison between hospitals.
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 say in progress (27 February 2026)
Please see our response to recommendation 252 above.
NHS Digital publishes data on written complaints made by or on behalf of patients about NHS services in England, for both primary and secondary care. From 2015-16 to 2021-22 these data were collected and published for quarterly reporting periods. From 2022-23 these data are collected and published on an annual basis.
See also recommendation 40, 99 and 102 in relation to LFPSE
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 - Ongoing”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 259, PDF page 563.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
The Department of Health, working with the Health and Social Care Information Centre, committed to developing a system that enabled Trusts to publish accurate, detailed quarterly data on the number of complaints received, and to enable comparison across hospitals.
The overall aim of the revisions is to provide members of the public and regulatory bodies with frequent, more meaningful data which will identify organisations whose level of complaints, whether high or low, suggests there may be cause for concern. Hospitals will begin revised collections from April 2015, with the first quarterly report envisaged by late summer 2015. It is expected the public can begin to compare Trusts’ complaints data by late Autumn 2015.
However, the Consultation is complete with our responses published. The Department of Health have now written out to NHS Complaints Managers and advised them of the changes to the NHS Complaints Data Collection and from April 2015 data will be collected and published quarterly.
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 by the Government.
In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that the Department of Health had worked with the Health and Social Care Information System to revise complaints data collection. Revised collections were to begin from April 2015.
NHS Digital (the successor to the Health and Social Care Information Centre) publishes quarterly data on written complaints.
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. 259, PDF page 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