The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has reported that West Street Dental Practice in Congleton is not meeting the essential standard and must improve.

Key failures were in cleanliness and infection control, and safety. Inspectors found risks of cross-contamination as overfilled bags of clinical waste were being stored near clean items.

This must surely be a common problem. Many dental surgeries, like some many GP practices, are little more than a couple of rooms converted from a 2-up 2-down terraced house. That certainly seems to be the case for West Street Dental Practice, who perhaps struggle to provide suitable secure storage for clinical waste. Perhaps space is available, and they just don’t use it.

The regulators, for healthcare services and for the environment, each bluster about the need for hygiene and waste security though it is rare that these basic errors are the subject of regulatory intervention, unless and until there is another more serious issue in which case clinical waste handling and storage failures are added to the rap sheet as little more than padding.

These issues are commonplace. That is not to say that the problem is not serious and should not be addressed, but first there is need to address the regulatory failures that turn so often a blind eye.

Only when regulators regulate will standards improve.