Part 6: Miscellaneous Social Care: Regulation and Financial Assistance Section 163: Regulation of local authority functions relating to adult social care
This section amends Chapter 3 of Part 1 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Subsection (3) inserts section 46A to the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to introduce a new duty for the CQC to review and make an assessment of the performance of English local authorities in their delivery of their adult social care functions under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014.
	Section 46A(1) will require the CQC to review local authorities’ undertaking of "regulated care functions" (prescribed adult social care functions under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014), assess their performance following such a review and then publish a report of its assessment.
	Section 46A(2) and (3) provide that the "regulated care functions" to be reviewed are to be set out in secondary legislation and may include all or an aspect of a function.
	The reviews undertaken by the CQC under new section 46A will be by reference to objectives and priorities set for the CQC by the Secretary of State under section 46A(4). Review by the CQC will be by reference to a set of quality indicators determined by the CQC and subject to the subsequent approval of the Secretary of State (section 46A(5)). Under section 46A(8) the CQC must devise a methodology for assessing and evaluating local authorities’ performance , and the frequency by which it will undertake its performance reviews, which it must then set out in a statement to be approved by the Secretary of State. The methodology can be varied according to the circumstances of the review.
	Upon approval by the Secretary of State, in accordance with section 46A(11) the CQC must then publish this statement. The CQC must also publish the objectives and priorities against which it is undertaking its reviews as set by the Secretary of State, and the quality indicators against which performance is to be assessed.
	The new review and performance assessment duty of the CQC will apply to "relevant English local authorities" who have duties and responsibilities to undertake adult social care functions, namely: county councils, district councils where there is no county council, London borough councils or the Common Council of the City of London. For the purposes of this section it is also specified in new section 46A(12) that the Council of the Isles of Scilly is included in this definition of "English local authority" only so far as references to local authority in Part 1 of the Care Act 2014 include references to the Council of the Isles of Scilly.
	Subsection (4) amends section 48 so that reviews under 46A are excluded from constituting a special review under that section.
	Subsection (5) amends section 50 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, such that following a review of a local authority under Section 46A, there will be certain steps that the CQC may or must take when a local authority is considered by the CQC to be failing in the discharge of its adult social services functions. In accordance with the provisions in section 50, these steps are determined by whether the CQC considers the local authority is failing to discharge any of its adult social services functions to an acceptable standard.
	Subsection (6) amends section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, so that the CQC may carry out inspections of relevant English local authorities in relation to the exercise of their regulatory functions.