Emily Miles will take up the post of permanent chief executive of the Care Quality Commission this autumn, ending months of uncertainty over the leadership of England's health and social care regulator following the abrupt departure of Sir Julian Hartley last October.

Miles currently serves as Director General for Food, Farming and Biosecurity at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a post she has held since September 2024. Before that she spent five years as chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, where she oversaw the transition to a post-Brexit regulatory regime and steered the organisation through a series of food safety controversies. Her twenty-four years in the civil service also include spells at the Home Office and Cabinet Office, and a period advising Downing Street on home affairs policy.

She will succeed Dr Arun Chopra, who has run the CQC on an interim basis since Hartley's resignation. Chopra, who joined the regulator as Chief Inspector of Mental Health, stepped into the top role at short notice after Hartley concluded that his position had become untenable given his own prior tenure as chief executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the trust at the centre of an ongoing inquiry into maternity failures. Once Miles arrives, Chopra will return to his substantive role overseeing mental health regulation.

The recruitment process was led by Kay Boycott, who has chaired the CQC board on an interim basis since Professor Sir Mike Richards stood down. The panel drew on non-executive directors, peer regulators and stakeholder representatives, reflecting the scrutiny now attached to senior appointments at an organisation still working through the consequences of Dr Penny Dash's damning 2024 review, which found the CQC had lost credibility across the sectors it regulates. The leadership overhaul extends beyond the chief executive post. Baroness Julia Neuberger is the government's preferred candidate to take over permanently as chair, pending a pre-appointment hearing before the Health and Social Care Select Committee, and her involvement in shaping the incoming top team signals an attempt to align the regulator's governance before the next phase of reform begins in earnest.

In its statement announcing the appointment, the CQC described Miles's task in unambiguous terms, framing her arrival as central to improving operational performance and restoring confidence among providers and the public who rely on the watchdog's judgments. That confidence has been in short supply. Inspection backlogs, inconsistent assessments and a widely criticised single assessment framework have all featured in the criticisms levelled at the CQC over the past two years, and Hartley's own account of the scale of the challenge, offered publicly before his resignation, suggested the organisation's problems ran deeper than a change of personnel alone could resolve.

For her part, Miles struck a tone consistent with a career built in regulatory roles rather than clinical or operational healthcare leadership. She spoke of protecting patients, supporting providers to improve and pushing for better integration across health and care services, language that echoes the FSA's own emphasis on public trust during her time there. Whether that experience translates cleanly to a regulator overseeing hospitals, care homes and mental health services, rather than food supply chains, will become clearer once she is in post.

Her appointment nonetheless closes a difficult chapter for an organisation that has cycled through interim leadership twice in little more than a year. It also arrives at a moment when the Department of Health and Social Care is weighing broader questions about regulatory capacity and accountability across the health system, from integrated care boards to the future shape of NHS England itself. Miles will inherit not only an organisation mid-repair but a policy environment in which the CQC's own credibility is being watched as closely as the providers it inspects.