CQC ratings explained: how to read an inspection report

A home that has not yet been inspected shows as not yet rated. That is normal for a new home or one that has recently changed hands, and says nothing either way.

Inspectors rate the home on five key questions, and each gets its own rating in the report:

• Safe: are people protected from harm? Staffing levels, medicines, infection control, safeguarding, the building.
• Effective: does the care work? Training, consent, food and drink, working with GPs and nurses.
• Caring: are people treated with kindness and dignity? This is where inspectors write down what residents and families told them.
• Responsive: is care built around the person? Care plans, activities, complaints, end of life care.
• Well-led: is the home run well? The manager, the culture, how problems are found and fixed.

The overall rating is not an average. A home with a Requires improvement in Safe or Well-led will normally be Requires improvement overall, whatever the other three say. That is deliberate: those two questions are where harm starts.

Good in Caring and Requires improvement in Safe is a common pattern. It means kind staff, stretched too thin.

The CQC moved away from routine inspections on a fixed cycle some years ago. Homes rated Good or Outstanding may go several years between visits; homes rated lower are seen sooner. It is not unusual to find a Good rating from four or five years ago, under a different manager, possibly a different owner.

Every home page on this site shows the date the rating was published. If it is more than two or three years old, treat it as history and look for newer signals: the manager’s name on the CQC register, the home’s own recent reviews, and what you see when you visit.

Open the full report on the CQC website (every home page here links to it) and read in this order:

1. The summary on the first page. It says what the inspectors found in plain terms and lists any breaches of regulation.
2. Safe. Look for staffing numbers, medicines errors, and whether risks like falls and pressure sores were managed. The phrase “people were not always safe” is the one to notice.
3. Well-led. Whether there is a registered manager, how long they have been there, and whether the provider knew about problems before the inspectors did.
4. Caring. The quotes from residents and relatives. Inspectors choose them carefully.
5. Enforcement and action. At the end. A requirement notice means the home was told to fix something; a warning notice or a condition on registration is more serious.

If the home is part of a group, look up the provider’s other homes too. Our provider pages list every home under one owner with its rating, and a pattern across a group is worth more than one report.

• Whether the home is right for this person: a Good dementia unit and a Good home for younger adults are very different places
• What it costs, or whether fees include what you need (see what the fee includes)
• Whether the staff you meet on a visit will still be there in a year
• How the food tastes, whether the garden is used, whether anyone laughs
• What has happened since the inspection date

A reasonable rule: shortlist Good and Outstanding homes first, read the report of any Requires improvement home before ruling it out, and only consider an Inadequate home if the report is recent, the problems were specific, and you have seen for yourself that they have been fixed. Then visit. Our visit checklist covers what to look for and ask.

You can filter any area page on this site by CQC rating, and every home shows its rating and the date beside the fee.