Ms Sutcliffe joins the CQC from the Social Care Institute for Excellence where she is currently the Chief Executive. Her new role will be to take the lead for CQCs inspection and regulation of social care across adult services. She will also be responsible for developing the new approach to the way CQC regulates social care in consultation with the users of these services.

Ms Sutcliffe will also oversee the development of a new rating system for social care providers, championing the interests of people using services and evaluating the quality of care being provided.

Ms Sutcliffe said “I am honoured and delighted to be appointed to this vital role. I am looking forward to working with everyone at CQC and across social care to help make a difference for people who are using services, their families and carers. Nothing is more important.”

CQC Chief Executive Mr David Behan said “Andrea is the ideal person to lead the work on ensuring social care provide people with safe, effective, compassionate high quality care.”

The first Chief Inspector of hospitals for the NHS Sir Mike Richards who works with the Care Quality Commission has announced a more in-depth system for inspecting NHS premises in light of the scandals at Mid Staffordshire Hospital and more recently the Furness General Hospital.

Under the new scheme Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection teams will be larger with between 20 to 30 people including doctors, nurses, heath care managers and patients. These teams will be trained and initially supervised by the CQC.

The inspection overall has been forced on the CQC because the much less demanding inspection programme it previously ran failed to uncover poor care at several hospital and NHS sites.

The scheme will be trialled before Christmas at 18 hospital trusts these include six where the CQC already have some concerns about care quality being delivered.

Sir Richards said “There is too much variation in the quality of care patients receive. Poor hospitals will need to up their game and learn from the best. I will not tolerate poor or mediocre care.”