Impact assessment

Health Bill: patient safety measures - impact assessments

Outlines the approach to assessing the objectives, rationale, costs and benefits of the proposed changes to patient safety measures as part of the Health Bill.

• From: Department of Health and Social Care
• Published: 14 May 2026
• Last updated: 9 September 2026 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Health Bill: patient safety measures - impact assessments

PDF, 1.02 MB, 40 pages

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Details

This document contains 3 impact assessments:

• Abolishing Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch
• Transfer of Health Services Safety Investigation Board (HSSIB) functions into the Care Quality Commission (CQC)
• Care Quality Commission (CQC): extending the statute of limitations

The Health Bill is supporting 2 overarching aims:

• improve patient safety and experience through a new single patient record (SPR), enabling joined-up, proactive care and empowering patients
• put power and resources in the hands of NHS organisations providing direct patient care by abolishing NHS England and stripping back national bureaucracy

See the Health Bill collection page for the bill’s other supporting documents:

• other impact assessments
• equality impact assessments
• fact sheets

Published 14 May 2026

Last updated 9 September 2026 — Show all updates

1. 9 September 2026

   The impact assessment on the transfer of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body into the CQC has been updated to reflect some minor corrections to the potential transition costs and non-monetised benefits. It has also been updated to clarify the aim of reducing the number of unimplemented recommendations, the business-as-usual investigation costs and any potential redundancy costs.

2. 14 May 2026

   First published.