The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care services in England. They also protect the interests of people whose rights have been restricted under the Mental Health Act.

They have published a five year plan outlining how they will drive up standards on behalf of people with learning disabilities. This has been published in response to an inpatient review published on16 December 2009.

One interesting statistic within the document is that there are almost 1 million people in the UK with a learning disability and of these 800,000 are adults.

Key to driving improvement will be building intelligence networks, within services, representative groups and other relevant organisations.

The publication can be downloaded from http://www.cqc.org.uk/_db/_documents/CQC_learning_disability_strat_plan_2010-15.pdf.