CQC's State of Care 2024/25: A System Under Severe Strain, With Staffing Named as a Key Risk

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) published its annual State of Care report for 2024/25 on 24 October 2025, having presented it to Parliament the day before. It is the regulator's flagship yearly assessment of health and social care across England, covering around 29,000 registered providers, and this year's edition describes a system that is, in the CQC's own words, fragmented and under severe strain.

The report points to demand for care rising faster than services can respond, with local authority budgets failing to keep pace with the growing complexity and volume of need. One striking figure: 1,809,000 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E during 2024/25, up 10 per cent on the year before.

Staffing is central to the CQC's diagnosis. The regulator names ongoing workforce shortages, alongside financial pressure and poorly connected pathways between health and social care, as key drivers of the strain it is seeing across services. In adult social care specifically, 84 per cent of providers reported difficulty filling essential posts, underlining just how widespread recruitment challenges remain, even as national vacancy figures have eased elsewhere.

The report singles out maternity services and urgent care as among the weakest-performing areas, linking this to high staff turnover, ongoing recruitment difficulties and gaps in leadership capacity. Nearly half of NHS acute trusts were rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate for safety, a picture the CQC describes as virtually unchanged from the year before.

CQC chief executive Ian Trenholm summed up the findings by warning that sustained staffing shortages and fragile local partnerships mean people are still experiencing variable access, quality and safety depending on where they live. The report also calls for greater investment in community services, warning that a lack of investment there risks undermining efforts to shift more care out of hospitals.

What this means for jobseekers

• Staffing shortages identified by the regulator aren't just a headline; they translate into real, ongoing vacancies, particularly in adult social care, maternity and urgent care.
• If you're weighing up specialisms, the areas the CQC flags as under the most pressure, including maternity, urgent and emergency care, and adult social care, are also areas where employers are most likely to be actively recruiting.
• Where you work matters. The report highlights big variation in quality and access between different parts of England, so it's worth researching a provider's most recent CQC rating before accepting a role.
• Leadership capacity gaps are flagged as part of the problem, which may mean genuine opportunities for staff looking to move into supervisory or management posts in social care and maternity settings.

This is a summary for general information. Read the original source for full detail before relying on it.