Small businesses hit by annual fees under the Regulation of Health and Social Care Bill will not receive any support from the department responsible.
Health and social care businesses will be inspected and regulated under the Bill which the government says will ensure the public are receiving “compassionate, safe, effective and quality care”.
The government has said this will include General Practice (GP) surgeries, childminders, midwives, physiotherapist and tattooists, that provide a health and/or social care activity or activities.
Minister Claire Christian has said the government expects that up to 640 businesses may be affected by this.
Care
Asked a series of written questions by Rob Callister (Onchan), Ms Christian said that there will be a “phased approach to implement the registration of all services that will be regulated”.
She added: “Although there will be an increase in numbers of businesses to register and inspect, the service providers will be inspected on a risk-based inspection methodology.
“Therefore, reducing the frequency of inspections for services deemed to be lower risk The R&I team will require additional staffing resource to fulfil this obligation.
The department will also engage external inspection services where subject matter expertise is required to regulate services that the current R&I team do not regulate.”
Claire Christian, Minister for Health and Social Care
Cost
Ms Christian said that the department aims to “achieve full cost recovery of these additional resources through the income generated with annual registration fees”.
Responding to a separate questions, she said the department “will not be providing financial assistance to small businesses with the registration or annual fee requirements”.
“However, the new legislation aims to introduce a proportionate and fair fee scale for service providers,” she added.
“The fee scale has not yet been finalised; however, some factors that may be considered include the size of the business (e.g. number of staff), the number of beds or chairs (e.g. Dentists), the number of regulated activities being provided or the number of service users.”
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