Care Quality Commission cancels registration of Hailsham Medical Group following ‘serious concerns’ and ‘systemic failures of governance’
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has announced it has cancelled the registration of Hailsham Medical Group (HMG).
A message at www.cqc.org.uk said: “We cancelled the registration of Hailsham Medical Group on 24 April 2026 following an inspection at Seaforth Farm Surgery. This was because we found serious concerns related to safe care, effective management and treatment of patients, and systemic failures of governance.”
A new provider has now taken over HMG’s patients.
The CQC, which has a timeline of inspections, said it conducted an unannounced assessment on August 7-12 last year ‘to follow up on compliance with warning notices served on 4 September 2024 and in response to information of concern’.
This CQC report said: “Seaforth Farm Surgery is a GP practice and delivers services to approximately 11,400 patients under a contract held with NHS England. Services are provided from Seaforth Farm Surgery (main surgery) and Vicarage Field Surgery (branch surgery). We visited both sites during this assessment.”
It said the previous inspection had found the practice was ‘failing to provide safe care and treatment to patients’. At the August 2025 inspection, the CQQ said it identified improvements related to the management of safety alerts and fire risk assessments. But the report said: “Insufficient improvements had been made, and additional concerns were identified.”
The CQC added that the provider ‘remained non-compliant with the warning notices’ so the CQQ ‘took urgent enforcement action which imposed conditions on the provider’s registration’.
The CQC said its next unannounced assessment of both sites was on November 11, 2025.
The report for this, published at www.cqc.org.uk on April 16, said: “We found the service had made insufficient improvements in response to breaches of regulation previously identified. There was ineffective oversight of staff employed in advanced clinical roles.”
The report also said leaders had ‘failed to introduce a positive culture where staff felt they could speak up’, adding that information about risks, performance and outcomes ‘was not being effectively used to evaluate and improve performance’.
It said: “Some clinical records we reviewed appeared to be conflicting, inaccurate or missing. People using the service experienced unexplained delays in diagnosis of diabetes.”
This CQC report said some improvements had been made, explaining that the service had ‘taken action to clear the backlog of test results’ and had systems in place to prevent more backlogs building up. It also said emergency medicines and equipment at the main and branch sites were being regularly checked.
But the report said: “We found continued breaches of regulation in relation to safe care and treatment, staffing, and good governance.”
A notice about HMG appeared on both the Sussex Health and Care and Vita Healthcare websites in February. This confirmed that Manor Park Surgery, Polegate, operated by Vita Healthcare, has taken over HMG’s registered patients.
The notice said patients do not need to do anything or re-register with the new provider. It said: “They can also continue to contact the practice in the same ways as they have always done, and to attend appointments in Hailsham, with no break in accessing services while the required processes take their course.”
The notice said NHS Sussex had decided the Integrated Care Board (ICB) should engage a new provider from the area to provide GP services to the patient group. There was a call for expressions of interest (EOI) from current providers within an eight-mile radius of Hailsham. This process was launched on January 16 and a panel reviewed six bids on February 5.
The notice said: “The panel included an NHS Sussex Clinical Director who is a practising GP from Sussex, together with NHS Sussex’s Director of Quality, Patient Safety and Experience, and a representative from the Surrey and Sussex Local Medical Committee. The outcome of the panel is that Manor Park Surgery, Polegate (Vita Healthcare) has been named as the new provider to take over the Hailsham Medical Group’s list of registered patients.”