Experts by Experience Services

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent health and social care regulator in England that monitors, inspects and regulates health and social care services to ensure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety. It ensures health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We are starting to gather information to help shape the procurement of a contract to deliver our Experts by Experience programme for delivery from April 2026 onwards.

Experts by Experience are people who have personal experience of the services we regulate, either directly or as family carers.

The contract will recruit manage and train a pool of Experts by Experience and provide the necessary support to enable these Experts by Experience to work with CQC on its ongoing programme of assessments of health and care services. Experts by Experience also support other CQC activity such as the codesign of guidance and policy development.

During inspections, Experts by Experience speak with people using services and their family or organisations that support them. Their findings are used to support CQC inspectors’ judgements on services and may be included in CQC inspection reports.

The contract will also build, manage and maintain a Public Engagement Network of community groups on CQCs behalf, providing CQC with intelligence and insight from:

-People from seldom-heard communities.
-People with protected characteristics.
-People made vulnerable by their circumstances.

The lotting structure of the contract will be determined as a result of the pre-market supplier engagement.

Further information is included in the Additional Information section VI.3.