CQC’s assessment framework explained for a small care service (October 2026)
CQC rates a service on five questions. Under them sit 34 quality statements, six kinds of evidence, a score of 1 to 4 for each statement and a percentage that sets the rating. This guide explains each part in plain words from CQC’s own pages, says what a small care service keeps ready, and sets out what CQC has said it will change by the end of 2026.
In short
- CQC asks five key questions: is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. Each gets a rating, and the five combine into one overall rating.
- Under them sit 34 quality statements, written as “we” statements. CQC picks which to assess: one, several or all.
- For each statement CQC looks at evidence in up to six categories and gives the statement a score of 1 to 4.
- The scores under a key question become a percentage. 63 to 87% is good. Any statement scored 1 caps the key question at requires improvement.
- After a draft report you have 10 working days to correct facts, and 15 working days after publication to ask for a process review.
- CQC said in March 2026 it will replace the statements and the scoring with sector frameworks, key lines of enquiry and rating characteristics, starting at the end of 2026. The habits below hold either way.
1. What the framework is
It is the list of things CQC looks for, and the way it sorts them. The five questions have been there for years. Under each question, the topics are now called quality statements.
Our assessment framework is made up of 5 key questions and, under each key question, a set of quality statements.
Quality statements are the commitments that providers, commissioners and system leaders should live up to. Expressed as ‘we statements’, they show what is needed to deliver high-quality, person-centred care.
A quality statement is a sentence that starts “We” and describes what a good service does. This is the one on staffing, under the safe key question:
We make sure there are enough qualified, skilled and experienced people, who receive effective support, supervision and development. They work together effectively to provide safe care that meets people’s individual needs.
Each statement’s page also lists the regulations it relates to. The staffing statement points to Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), Regulation 18 (staffing) and Regulation 19 (fit and proper persons employed). So a statement is a plain way of asking whether you meet those regulations, not a new rule on top of them.
2. The five key questions and the 34 statements
CQC lists the statements under each question on its site. The table counts them. The counts are ours, from those lists.
| Key question | Statements | Examples (CQC’s names) |
|---|---|---|
| Safe | 8 | Learning culture; Safeguarding; Safe and effective staffing; Infection prevention and control; Medicines optimisation |
| Effective | 6 | Assessing needs; Monitoring and improving outcomes; Consent to care and treatment |
| Caring | 5 | Kindness, compassion and dignity; Independence, choice and control; Workforce wellbeing and enablement |
| Responsive | 7 | Person-centred care; Listening to and involving people; Equity in access; Planning for the future |
| Well-led | 8 | Shared direction and culture; Freedom to speak up; Governance, management and sustainability; Learning, improvement and innovation |
You will not be assessed on all 34 at once. CQC chooses.
be selective in which quality statements we look at – this could be one, several or all.
CQC also says it will name a set of priority statements for each type of service and will usually look at those each time. We could not find that published list for home care or care homes on 2 October 2026, so we do not guess at it. The safe habit is to treat every statement as possible.
3. The six evidence categories
For each statement CQC sorts what it finds into six kinds of evidence.
We have grouped the different types of evidence we will look at into 6 categories.
They are: people’s experience of the service; feedback from staff and leaders; feedback from partners; observation; processes; and outcomes. For home care and shared lives services CQC publishes, statement by statement, which categories it will focus on and examples of what it will look at. For every statement under safe it lists people’s experience and feedback from staff and leaders, then adds a “processes” list. For the staffing statement that list is:
appraisal and supervision records; recruitment records; staff vacancy and turnover rate; staffing and staff skill mix records; training in communication with people with a learning disability and autistic people; training, development and competency records
Two sentences on CQC’s pages set the tone for all of this, and they are worth keeping in mind before you buy a single ring binder:
These are examples of the types of evidence we will look at. They are not full lists and we do not expect you to have everything we include here.
We do not want providers to prepare specific documents – rather we ask for information they already have.
In plain words: a folder of good policies is one category out of six. It does not carry the rest. What people you support say, what your staff say, what an inspector sees, and what your records show actually happened all count alongside it. Adult social care services also still complete the annual provider information return, the PIR, when CQC asks for it.
4. Scores, percentages and ratings
CQC changed its scoring on 2 December 2024. Before then it scored each evidence category. Now it gives one score per quality statement.
We give a score for each quality statement that we’ve assessed. The score will be on a scale of 1 to 4.
The four scores mean: 1, evidence shows significant shortfalls; 2, some shortfalls; 3, a good standard; 4, an exceptional standard. Inspectors use professional judgement to pick the score. The statement scores under a key question are then added up and divided by the maximum possible, which is 4 for each statement, to give a percentage. The percentage sets the key-question rating:
25 to 38% = inadequate; 39 to 62% = requires improvement; 63 to 87% = good; 88% and above = outstanding
Two rules stop a weak area hiding behind a good average:
If the key question score is within the good range, but one or more of the quality statement scores is 1, the rating is limited to requires improvement. If the key question score is within the outstanding range, but one or more of the quality statement scores is 1 or 2, the rating is limited to good.
Worked example, ours: a key question with six statements has a maximum of 24. Scores of 3, 3, 3, 3, 2 and 3 add to 17, which is 71%, so good. Change one of those 3s to a 1 and the total is 15, which is 63%, still inside the good range, but the rule above limits the rating to requires improvement. One statement scored 1 is enough to do that, whatever the rest look like.
Adult social care services are rated at two levels: a rating for each key question, and an overall rating for the service. CQC’s rule for the overall rating is:
The overall rating will normally be good if there are both: no key questions rated as inadequate; no more than 1 key question rated as requires improvement.
Two or more key questions at requires improvement normally make the overall rating requires improvement. Two or more at inadequate normally make it inadequate. Outstanding overall normally needs at least two key questions at outstanding and the rest at good. For a newly registered service, CQC says it will usually assess all the quality statements within 12 months, and it will not publish a key-question rating until it has assessed all the statements under that question.
5. How often CQC looks
There is no published timetable. CQC says the trigger is information, not the calendar.
The frequency of assessments will depend on the information we receive and the evidence we collect.
We will no longer use the rating of a service as the main driver when deciding when we next need to assess. Evidence we collect or information we receive at any time can trigger an assessment.
An assessment is either planned or responsive. Responsive means CQC has received concerning information: a notification, a complaint, a safeguarding referral, a whistleblower. So the wait can be short or long, and you will not know which. Evidence kept up to date as you go is always ready. Evidence gathered after the email is not. On the same page CQC says it will publish a detailed schedule for planned assessments once it has decided new frequencies. We have not found that schedule on cqc.org.uk as of 2 October 2026.
6. After the assessment: two clocks
CQC sends a draft report by email, with a link to comment online. The first clock starts then.
Once you receive our email with your draft report, you will have 10 working days from the date of the email to review the report and submit any comments about factual accuracy.
Use those ten days for three things CQC says it will accept: typing or numerical errors; information it relied on that you can show was wrong at the time, with evidence; and relevant information it left out. Action you have taken since the assessment can go in the final report but will not normally change the judgement. Make sure CQC holds the right email address for the registered manager and the nominated individual, because each registered person gets the email and the clock does not wait.
The second clock starts when the rating is published. You can ask for a rating process review, but only on one ground.
You must submit the request within 15 working days of the publication of the rating, and you can only submit one request for an assessment.
You cannot ask for a review on the basis that you disagree solely with our judgements, reasoning, the score or rating awarded.
So the review is about whether CQC followed its own steps, in 500 words, and the rating stays published while it runs. The place to argue the facts is the factual accuracy check, not the review.
7. What CQC says will change
CQC ran a public consultation, “Better regulation, better care”, that closed on 11 December 2025. Its response, published 25 March 2026, lists five changes it intends to make.
Instead, we are planning to re-introduce separate assessment frameworks for each main health and care sector that we regulate.
Rather than using quality statements, our assessment frameworks will include a set of new supporting key lines of enquiry, which will clearly indicate the areas we look at during assessments and inspections.
We will remove scoring from our assessment approach. Future rating judgements will be made holistically using the professional judgement of our inspection teams, informed by evidence and with reference to the rating characteristics and supporting guidance.
The other two: rating characteristics come back, so each of the four ratings is described in words for each area; and judgements are made directly at key question level, with nothing formal below it. The draft adult social care framework published for feedback in March 2026 has 24 key lines of enquiry in place of the 34 statements (our count from its contents list). Each one is a question. The staffing one reads:
Are there enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff who receive adequate support, supervision and development to keep people safe and meet their needs?
On timing, CQC’s own plan says:
In summer 2026, publishing the final assessment framework(s) and developing guidance to support providers before we start to implement them at the end of the year.
On 2 October 2026 the provider guidance pages on cqc.org.uk still describe the quality statements and the scoring. We could not find a final adult social care framework on the site. So the position for an assessment this autumn is the one in sections 1 to 6. Read the question above and the staffing statement in section 1 side by side and the point is clear: the wording changes, the subject does not. Enough staff, properly checked, trained and supervised. The evidence you keep for one answers the other.
8. What a small care service keeps ready
This table takes the processes CQC itself lists for home care and shared lives services and matches them to records most services already hold. The left column is CQC’s. The other two are our working suggestions.
| CQC’s example (homecare evidence categories) | What that usually is in a small service | Keep it ready by |
|---|---|---|
| Recruitment records | A file per worker: identity, right to work, DBS, references, interview notes, employment history | Checking every file against one list before the person starts, and dating the check |
| Training, development and competency records | Certificates with dates, a matrix showing who is due what, observed competencies for medicines and moving and handling | Reviewing the matrix monthly and acting on the due dates |
| Appraisal and supervision records | Dated supervision notes, annual appraisals, spot-check records | Booking the next one before closing the current one |
| Incident, near misses and events records; duty of candour records | An incident log with what happened, what you did, who you told and what changed | Closing each entry with a dated action and an owner |
| Safeguarding policy, records and training | The policy, the referrals you made and the outcomes, the training dates | Filing each referral with the local authority’s reply |
| Medicines audits and action plans; PRN protocols | Audit results, the actions that came out of them, a protocol for every “when required” medicine | Turning each audit finding into an action with a date and a closing note |
| Quality management, systems and reporting; business continuity plans and risk register | Your audit calendar, the reports you review, the plan for a lost office or a lost system | Signing and dating each review, even when nothing changed |
| Mechanisms for seeking and responding to staff feedback; whistleblowing records | Team meeting minutes, staff surveys, the concerns raised and your reply | Minuting the date, who attended and what was agreed |
Two habits do most of the work. Date everything. And for every audit, write down who will act, by when, and what changed. Our other guides cover the detail: care worker recruitment checks, care staff training: what is actually required, managing medicines in home care and CQC notifications: what to report and when.
How MyCareGuard handles this
MyCareGuard keeps a staff register with DBS and right-to-work evidence and due dates, training records with dated certificates, an incident and events log with a dated audit trail, and policies you adopt and sign for your service. Audit findings become actions with an owner, a target date and an evidence file when closed. One press assembles these into a single dated inspection pack. It sits beside your rota and care-planning system and does not replace them, and an empty record does not show that a requirement has been met.
Questions people ask
How many key questions and quality statements are there?
Five key questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive, well-led) and 34 quality statements. The framework page says it is “made up of 5 key questions and, under each key question, a set of quality statements”. Counting the statements listed on CQC’s five key-question pages gives 8 under safe, 6 under effective, 5 under caring, 7 under responsive and 8 under well-led. The count is ours.
Does CQC look at all 34 statements in one assessment?
No. The “differences from our previous model” page says CQC will “be selective in which quality statements we look at – this could be one, several or all”. The “how often we assess” page says CQC will set priority statements for each type of service and “will typically assess these quality statements in each assessment”. For a service that has never been rated, the rating page says all statements under a key question are assessed before the rating is published.
How is a score turned into a rating?
Each assessed quality statement gets a score of 1 to 4. The scores under a key question are added and divided by the maximum possible (4 per statement) to give a percentage. The thresholds on the “how we reach a rating” page (last updated 13 May 2025) are: 25 to 38% inadequate, 39 to 62% requires improvement, 63 to 87% good, 88% and above outstanding. Two rules cap the result: a key question in the good range with any statement scored 1 is limited to requires improvement, and one in the outstanding range with any statement scored 1 or 2 is limited to good.
How often will CQC assess my service?
CQC has not published a schedule. The “how often we assess” page (last updated 12 November 2025) says “The frequency of assessments will depend on the information we receive and the evidence we collect”, that an assessment is either planned or responsive, and that a detailed schedule will be published once new frequencies are decided. We have not found that schedule on cqc.org.uk as of 2 October 2026.
How long do I have to challenge a draft report?
Ten working days from the date of CQC’s email, for factual accuracy comments (“How to submit factual accuracy comments”, last updated 29 October 2025). After the rating is published you can ask for a rating process review within 15 working days, on one ground only: that CQC did not follow its own process. The page says you “cannot ask for a review on the basis that you disagree solely with our judgements, reasoning, the score or rating awarded”.
Is the framework changing?
Yes, CQC says so. Its 25 March 2026 consultation response says it will re-introduce sector-specific frameworks, replace quality statements with key lines of enquiry, re-introduce rating characteristics, remove scoring and rate directly at key question level. Its 2026 improvement plan says it will publish the final frameworks in summer 2026 and “start to implement them at the end of the year”. On 2 October 2026 the provider guidance on cqc.org.uk still describes the quality statements and scoring, so that is what we explain here.
Sources
- CQC, Assessment framework (key questions and quality statements)cqc.org.uk, page last updated 22 May 2025; retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
- CQC, Assessing quality and performance (how often we assess, how we gather evidence, how we reach a rating, levels of ratings, factual accuracy check, rating process review)cqc.org.uk, section pages last updated between 21 May 2024 and 22 July 2026; retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
- CQC, Evidence categories, and Homecare and shared lives services: evidence categoriescqc.org.uk, pages last updated 29 April 2024 (categories), 22 February 2024 (homecare, safe) and 13 August 2025 (homecare, well-led); retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
- CQC, Our initial response to our public consultation: Better regulation, better carecqc.org.uk, page last updated 25 March 2026; retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
- CQC, Our improvement plans for 2026cqc.org.uk, published 27 November 2025, page last updated 23 December 2025; retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
- CQC, DRAFT adult social care assessment framework v9 (PDF, 64 pages)cqc.org.uk, file dated 19 March 2026, published for feedback; that consultation closed 12 June 2026; retrieved 2 October 2026 · GOV.UK
MyCareGuard is software, not a legal adviser or a CQC inspector; it does not give legal advice. This page describes what the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, the CQC’s published guidance and the other named documents say, with the paragraph for each point, so you can read the source yourself. Versions and dates are those in force on the date shown; the documents change, so check the current version before you rely on any of it.
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