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"We spend so much time carrying out routine inspection visits that we do not have enough time to follow up the complaints and concerns that people raise," the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) has claimed.

It is almost too painful to contemplate the horrific implications of this for service users. It is as if the police were to say they have put complaints of rape and robbery on the back-burner and prioritised checking tyres.

Indeed, Dame Denise Platt, chair of the CSCI, has described aspects of the current inspection system as "cobblers". But CSCI commissioners are ill-suited to reform the failed inspection regime. Having been in post for well over a year now, they are the very people who are largely responsible for allowing the regime to continue, putting at risk the very service users they are meant to protect.

Dedicated CSCI inspectors on the ground have been badly let down by commissioners. To want to be an inspector and drum abusers out of care is a noble ambition. But inspectors have largely been employed churning out subjective reports which, by the admission of the former National Care Standards Commission, contain bogus statistics, and are of little value to anyone.

One has to wonder why no inspector has publicly exposed such a flawed regime. After all, the whole ethos of the CSCI should be to encourage whistle-blowing. It seems that inspectors are just too frightened of their own employer.

For the time being at least, the CSCI looks set to continue publishing subjective reports based on subjective outcomes. Yet a subjective system can portray good providers as bad, threatening them with closure, and bad providers as good, putting service users at risk.

It would be better if no inspection reports were published other than when a serious problem has been identified. This would allow the CSCI to spend more resources policing and improving care rather than creating blizzards of paper. Then, finally, the priority could be getting rid of those providers who are a risk to service users.

Chris Brown is a CSCI registered service provider.