There's not much surprises me but this takes the biscuit! The CQC, are advertising a £1.2m contract to start a Leadership Development Programme. 'Managing and Leading the CQC Way'.

Expect it to include modules on the CQC Way of making hotel and charabanc companies rich, planning and shipping armies of 'inspectors' around the NHS.

It seems the King's Fund Leadership Programme, the Leadership Academy, the NHS Leadership Framework, the NHS leadership self-assessment programme, the DH, the Nuffield Leaders' Panel, every business school in Britain and the new NHS Improvement are not good enough for the CQC Way.

Be an alumni of a CQC Leadership course and nod-nudge-wink; ensure a good inspection report every time! The CQC Way...

Awarding some bursaries I might go with but this has got to stop. Ignoring austerity and throwing money away, duplicating the work of a dozen organisations and every university in Britain. The CQC Way! The CQC is way out of control. Leadership and the Board; way past their sell-by date.

This time it's not just me getting on the CQC's case:

"Health and care regulation is incoherent and expensive and there is little evidence for its effectiveness; if it was going to improve care it would have done so by now. It's time to rethink regulation."

And this:

"...a regulator's role is to minimise harm and to seek to do so by changing individual or organisational behaviour. It is not at all clear whether system regulators have improved the quality of care in a significant, sustained way, or if the benefit of this approach outweighs the very considerable costs."

Plus...

"The CQC's operational expenditure in 2014/2015 was £211 million...'

And...

"This does not include the whole costs of compliance to the organisations they regulate... organisations complain they are inspected and reported on too many times, by too many bodies all... require data in slightly different formats."

Organisations end up working for the Regulator and forget they are supposed to be there for the patients.

The report I am quoting from says...

"... when a regulator stands between care and the people it is for we have surely lost the plot."

The Report? Just published; from The Professional Standards Authority. The regulator that regulates the regulators; they've woken up to the mayhem that is the NHS regulatory landscape.

They say:

"Health and care regulation is incoherent and expensive and there is little evidence for its effectiveness; if it was going to improve care it would have done so by now.."  Where have you heard that before!