Deputy Director – Inspectorate Office, Mental Health

Grade E3: £75,183 per annum

Contracted Hours: Full-time 37 hours per week

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Homebased, with travel as required

Closing Date: Monday 25th May 2026 at 11.59pm

Interview Date: Tuesday 7th or Wednesday 8th July 2026 in Newcastle

Make a difference

Every role at CQC contributes to our mission. If you’re looking for a new role that offers purpose at a pivotal moment for the organisation, you’ve found it. As Deputy Director for Mental Health Inspectorate Office, you’ll support the Chief Inspector and Inspectorate Senior Leadership Team to deliver CQC’s strategy, strengthen performance, and help rebuild our organisation so it is fit for the future. To achieve this, you will need to build close relationships with the Directors and colleagues in the wider inspectorates.

We are recruiting four roles, each supporting one Inspectorate: Hospitals, Primary Care & Community Health Services, Mental Health, and Adult Social Care. While aligned to a specific sector, these roles are integral to working across Inspectorates to enable joined-up, consistent approaches and enhance collaboration.

Picture this

You work at the heart of the Chief Inspector’s Office, helping a small central team run smoothly while supporting clear priorities, strong relationships and confident leadership across the system.

In the last year as a Deputy Director for the Inspectorate Office, you might have:

• Helped the Chief Inspector drive operational delivery and performance during a period of organisational change, ensuring priorities stayed focused and achievable.
• Worked alongside other Deputy Directors to align cross‑sector priorities, sharing insight and learning so approaches were consistent across health and care.

The role

You’ll work closely with others to deliver shared outcomes. In this role, you’ll:

• Support the Chief Inspector’s leadership and delivery: Ensure the Chief Inspector of Mental Health is well supported to lead their Inspectorate, with clear priorities, strong oversight and effective use of time and resources.
• Coordinate and connect teams: Make sure relationships with the Senior Leadership Team, National Professional Advisors and corporate partners work well, so the Mental Health Inspectorate’s work is joined up and well supported.
• Provide operational insight and assurance: Bring together performance, risk and delivery information to give the Chief Inspector a clear picture of progress, emerging issues and opportunities to improve quality and consistency.

Show us

We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application form:

• Executive support and strategic delivery: Proven experience and track record of delivery in supporting executive leaders to deliver complex portfolios in national or complex organisations, including prioritisation, strategic planning, budget management and driving delivery against organisational priorities and objectives.
• Operational delivery and collaboration: Strong understanding of operational delivery in a fast paced, high energy environment, including monitoring and oversight of performance, productivity, quality, risk and assurance. Ability to deliver through matrix working, building trusted stakeholder relationships to achieve shared outcomes.
• Decision making, performance and change: Experience using data and insight to inform decisions, manage performance and deliver programmes. Able to communicate complex information clearly. Evidence of experience in leading and supporting complex change and demonstrating sound judgement, business acumen and political awareness.
• Sector-specific expertise: Demonstrable knowledge and experience of the Mental Health sector, including key operational pressures, regulatory requirements, and quality and safety considerations. Ability to apply this knowledge to support effective oversight, assurance or improvement activity is essential.

Apply today and be part of CQC’s work to strengthen health and care, making a real difference for people across England.

You can read the full details of the role in the following Job Description and Candidate Information Pack:

• Job Description
• Candidate Information Pack

How to apply

To apply for this role, please submit a copy of your CV and Supporting Statement (no more than 750-words) via the Recruitment System. Your Supporting Statement should cover the following:

• How your previous experience makes you suitable for this role?
• What strengths you will bring to the role?

If you’d like to join an informal group session on 22nd May 10-11am for more information about the role please contact Maeve Coleman to receive a link maeve.coleman@cqc.org.uk

For general enquiries, please email recruitment@cqc.org.uk.

Compliance

To progress your application, you’ll need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK. Without valid right to work you won’t be eligible for the role. We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role. Some roles may also be subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Next steps

If you apply, you’ll need to create a profile and complete an online application form. Please see our information for applicants for more details on the process. We contact every applicant to let them know the outcome of their application, so you will hear from us whether you are shortlisted.

The Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Annual leave; starting at 27 days per year, rising to 32.5 days with service, plus bank holidays (usually 8 days per year).
• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• NHS pension scheme, with around 14% employer contribution.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for Blue Light Card, costing £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Equity for all

We know job descriptions can feel intimidating. Research shows they can cause some people to doubt whether they’re a good fit. This happens more often to people from underrepresented groups (e.g. ethnic minority backgrounds). If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. Your unique perspective, skills, and experience could be exactly what we need.

We want every candidate to feel supported and able to do their best. If you need adjustments to our process, we’ll work with you to remove any barriers. Visit our accessibility page for more on this. If you’d like to chat, please contact recruitment@cqc.org.uk.

We promote a workplace where fairness, respect and inclusion are a priority. See our ED&I page for more about this.

We welcome applications from everyone, and colleagues can find support and community among our many employee networks. This includes people of any:

• Age
• Sex
• Gender identity or expression
• Sexual orientation
• Religion or belief
• Ethnicity
• Disability

A Note on AI

We know AI tools can be great for research and refining ideas, but we want to learn about you. If you use AI or Chatbots to help you with your application, keep these points in mind:

• AI can support research, structuring and refining your writing, but your application must reflect your real skills and experience.
• Spell-checking and condensing word counts are great ways to use AI effectively.
• Do not copy and paste AI generated answers. These will not help you stand out; remember we want to hear about your skills and experience.
• Providing false and insincere examples goes against our core values of honesty and integrity and may lead to your application being withdrawn or termination of your employment.

Values and vision

We are guided by our core values, which shape our work and our culture:

• Excellence – being a high-performing organisation.
• Caring – treating everyone with dignity and respect.
• Integrity – doing the right thing.
• Teamwork – learning from each other to be the best we can.

We are a disability confident employer and a carer confident employer.