The CQC’s Plan: ‘Working to Improve Good Regulation’ – The Impact for Care Homes

  • 16 July 2025 16 July 2025
  • UK & Europe

  • Regulatory movement

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), the regulator of health and social care services in England, has launched a wide-reaching plan to improve how it oversees and supports adult social care.

Following a period of operational challenges, the CQC is now refocusing its efforts on delivering more transparent, effective, and specialist-led regulation.

Inspections undertaken by the CQC of care homes are a vital part of ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of residents as well as staff, acting as a critical safeguard for some of the most vulnerable people in society. The CQC recognises that as part of this improvement, focus should be placed on greater consistency, sector-specific insight, and responsiveness.

 

Commitments for Adult Social Care Assessments

The CQC has set an ambitious target of conducting 5,013 assessments in the adult social care sector by September 2026. These assessments will focus on a wide range of services, including care homes, home care agencies, supported living, and other community based care providers.

The CQC plans to:

  • Prioritise inspections where concerns about safety or quality have been raised.
  • Maintain regular contact with providers and local authorities.
  • Use enhanced digital tools to streamline evidence collection and reporting.

The emphasis is on both improving care quality and identifying risks early, while ensuring providers receive clear, timely feedback.

 

Chief Inspector for Adult Social Care

To assist with improving its approach to regulation, the CQC has appointed Chris Badger as Chief Inspector for Adult Social Care and Integrated Care.

The CQC hopes his appointment “ensures we have the right expertise in place to understand the quality of care being delivered across all the services we regulate”. This new appointment of the Chief Inspector is an attempt to restore the sector-specialist model, whereby adult social care is no longer overseen through a generic or overly broad regulatory lens.

 

Overhauling the Assessment Framework for Social Care

The CQC is also simplifying and refining its single assessment framework which is a tool used to judge how well services are performing.

In adult social care, this will mean:

  • Reviewing and an overhaul of the CQC’s assessment framework.
  • Ensuring that frameworks reflect the realities of different sectors.
  • Revisiting how the CQC deliver and maintain ratings, as well as revisiting the frequency of assessments.
  • Revisiting the rating characteristics across sectors to ensure they match each framework.

Importantly, the CQC has committed to gathering feedback from a wide range of people, including providers and the public.

 

Increased inspections expected?

With a stark reduction in inspection activity by the CQC, it is hoped the plans to improve regulation will assist with increasing the CQC’s capacity to inspect in adult social care. In 2019, almost 15,800 inspections took place generally by the CQC across all sectors it regulates, which fell to a staggering 6,700 in 2023 – a decrease of nearly 58%.

In just one quarter (April–June 2025), more than 1,420 assessments were completed across sectors, many of them in social care settings. This does appear to be progress which is a step towards improved regulation by the CQC.

In addition, with targeted work also underway to improve processes for registration this will no doubt be welcomed by providers and managers in the adult care sector.

 

A Regulator Refocused?

It is hoped the CQC’s refocused commitment will help aid a transformation for adult social care regulation, and if implemented in practice, would be a welcomed improvement for providers.

By improving CQC regulation this will certainly aid oversight to ensure consistency and transparency. More frequent and faster inspections, with a dedicated sector specific focus when inspecting, will only be welcomed by providers, centrally helping to ensure services improve while ensuring people receive safe, person-centred care.

 


 

Clyde & Co are specialists in dealing with regulatory claims, and we closely monitor developments topics such as this. For more on this subject, you can read all of our previous articles here, and if you have any questions about this topic you can contact Stephanie Lunt or any of our Safety, Health, Environment & Regulatory team.

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