The London Borough of Bexley has welcomed the Care Quality Commission’s acknowledgement of key strengths within its Adult Social Care services and is now developing an action plan to address areas identified as needing improvement.
Following a visit to Bexley in October 2025, Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors have scored the Council’s Adult Social Care (ASC) one point short of a ‘Good’ rating.
Inspectors highlighted the service’s key strengths:
- assessment and care planning approach
- reablement and prevention services
- equipment, adaptations and technology-enabled care
- partnership working across health and voluntary sector
- workforce development and learning culture
- community engagement and prevention initiatives
They set out priority areas for development:
- supporting people to access services
- timeliness of reviews
- building on the effective safeguarding systems, processes and practices already in place
- bringing everyone’s satisfaction feedback up to the level felt by most
- local care market capacity, especially dementia, respite and supported accommodation
- supporting people to take Direct payments
The Council is developing an improvement plan to address these priorities and has already started to implement actions where appropriate.
Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson, Cabinet Member for Adults and Health, said:
Our Council is dedicated to providing high-quality services and to continually improving.
While we are very disappointed to be just one point away from a ‘Good’ rating, we are pleased the CQC has recognised our strengths in how we provide responsive assessments to support people to have the care and support they need. They also praised how we support people to live healthy lives through our reablement and prevention services alongside equipment, adaptations and technology-enabled care to support people to be independent and safe within their homes.
CQC recognised the effective partnership working across health and voluntary sector, and effective community engagement, which improves outcomes for residents. They found that carers felt involved in decisions and supported in their caring role. They also noted the effective approach we take to developing our staff, underpinned by a learning culture across our workforce.
We are developing and implementing a robust improvement plan, not just to nudge us over the line into the higher rating, but to ensure we provide the best possible services for all of our most vulnerable adult residents.
We have already taken action in some areas, for example, we have now put in place a Direct Payment support service and we have staff dedicated to completing Care Act reviews in a more timely manner.
The CQC recognised we have a strong safeguarding framework supported by clear policies and procedures. Systems are now in place to record and monitor consistency in safeguarding decisions and practice.
We have introduced ways of working to support carers at the time that is most helpful to them. We have coproduced an easily accessible information resource to help carers understand the support available to them and how to get that support. We have training codesigned and delivered by unpaid carers, to ensure it really meets their needs.
We now have embedded processes for sharing best practice across our services, supporting one-another to learn and develop so that we continually improve.”
Councillor David Leaf, Leader of the Council, said:
The CQC’s report has been a long time coming, following their inspection back in October last year, but we were implementing improvements when the inspectors arrived and we have continued to do so.
I fully recognise the incredible work and dedication our staff put into our services.
We value the strong partnerships that we are pleased CQC recognised across the health and voluntary sector in Bexley.
We look forward with confidence to receiving CQC inspectors again for our monitoring inspection, where we will be able to demonstrate the improvements we have made.”