Our Mission

Healthwatch Surrey is an independent service giving people in Surrey a strong, independent voice to help improve, shape and get the best from local health and social care services.

Our Vision

  • Healthwatch Surrey is the respected, trusted and credible champion of the consumer for health and social care in Surrey.

Goal: To have the relationships and  structure in place to enable us to be trusted by all of our stakeholders, allowing us to collect experiences from local people and feed it back to the relevant parts of the system. We will be persistent in seeking outcomes and measuring our impact.

  • Healthwatch Surrey’s role, function and services are known, understood and valued by local people who therefore readily contact us when they need us.

Goal: To have a simple, widely understood identity and mission, ensuring that at the time when people may benefit from contacting Healthwatch Surrey, they know who we are and what we do, can find and interact with us easily and, where appropriate, share their need and/or experiences with us.

  • Our influencing is based on sound knowledge of local issues and the insight and experiences of local people.

Goal: To acquire evidence, knowledge and insight that reflect local people’s experiences of services in Surrey whilst ensuring that we actively seek out insight from seldom heard or hard to reach groups.

  • As a social enterprise we have secured a growing and sustainable future.

Goal: To secure additional sources of income by offering services that are complementary to those of our main Healthwatch contract.

  • We continue building our use of volunteers

Goal: To grow the number of volunteers at Healthwatch Surrey and to continue to develop the different volunteering roles.

What we do

We:

  • Champion public and user involvement in decision making and design of services
  • Enable people to share views and concerns about local health and social care services
  • Provide evidence-based feedback to commissioners and providers to influence, inform and, if necessary, challenge decisions and plans
  • Provide, or signpost to, information about local services and how to access them
  • Provide feedback to the Care Quality Commission
  • Produce reports and recommendations to influence the way services are designed and delivered
  • Offer advocacy support for complaints about NHS services

We can report concerns about the quality of health and social care to Healthwatch England, which can then recommend that the Care Quality Commission take action.

How we work

We engage with and listen to what people from all parts of the community say so that we can offer reliable evidence that can be trusted. That way, we will have the credibility to speak with a voice that is heard and taken seriously by decision makers. We have a particular interest in reaching out to those who may be less well-heard.

Who governs us?

The Healthwatch Surrey service is run by Luminus Insight CIC, known as Luminus.

CIC is a “community interest company” which is a special form of non-charitable limited company, which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, rather than to make a profit for shareholders. 

The Directors of Luminus Insight CIC Board hold overall accountability for all our services, including our Healthwatch Surrey serviceOur Board meets in public on a quarterly basis. Our Local Healthwatch Advisory Group help advise and support our Healthwatch Surrey Contract Manager and our team on what priorities we work on and how we use our statutory powers.  

How we make decisions as a local Healthwatch is covered by our Decision Making Policy.

Collectively the Board of Directors guarantee the independence of Healthwatch Surrey and provide assurance that the community’s interest is being served at all times by our activity.

If you have any questions about Healthwatch Surrey, please visit our FAQs page.


Registered office: Luminus Insight CIC, GF21, Astolat, Coniers Way, Burpham, Surrey, GU4 7HL

Company number: 08737632. VAT Registration Number: 423 1451 37.