75.In circumstances so severe that they require Welsh Ministers to take urgent action, section 23 provides the Welsh Ministers with the power to take action by making an application to the magistrates court to urgently cancel an entire registration or, alternatively, a place at, from or in relation to which a service is provided. Urgent action may be taken only if there is a serious risk to a person’s life or physical or mental health or a risk of a person suffering from abuse or neglect.
76.One of the aims of this system of registration, and a consequence of it, is that an application to cancel the entirety of a provider’s registration would not completely fail in circumstances where the criteria in section 23(2) was not met in respect of each place at, from, or in relation to which each service was being provided. For example, the Welsh Ministers might apply to cancel the registration of a provider who provides a care home service at three places. The Court may be satisfied that the criteria in section 23(2) are met in respect of two of those places but not the remaining place. Section 23 provides the Court with the power to vary the registration of the provider by removing two of the places at which the care home service was being provided whilst maintaining the registration of the care home service in respect of the remaining place as opposed to refusing the entirety of the Welsh Ministers application.
77.The improvement notice procedure in sections 16 and 17 do not apply to urgent applications (see section 15(4)).