Health regulators have admitted losing the records of 500 senior staff working in health and care services.

The disclosure and barring service records went astray during an office move at the Care Quality Commission in Newcastle.

The CQC checks the security of records held by practices carefully as part of its controversial system of inspections.

But it has now had to report itself to the Information Commissioner over the loss of the records.

The files contained details of people who had applied to become registered managers and providers, such as practice managers and care home managers. There are nearly 40,000 of these in the NHS.

The regulator said it would now commission an external review of its security arrangements.

The files were held in box folders which staff locked in a filing cabinet, not realising it was marked for removal and destruction.

CQC records show the missing filing cabinet was traced to the company undertaking the clearance – but only two out of six box folders could be found.

The CQC says it had instructed the contractors to force open locked cabinets before removing them – and to leave the contents in the offices.

It said a limited amount of paperwork had been returned to the CQC after searches of furniture removed by the company – but it did not include the missing box files.

Chief executive David Behan said: “I would like to apologise to the individuals whose DBS certificates have been lost during the recent refurbishment of our office in Newcastle and for any distress this may cause. I deeply regret that this has happened.

“As soon as we became aware of the loss of the files, we carried out a thorough internal investigation to find out exactly what happened and we alerted the relevant authorities, including the Information Commissioner’s Office.

“I intend to commission an independent, external review of CQC’s security arrangements in case wider lessons can be learned and so that we can be confident that something like this does not happen again.”