How Often Do the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Inspect Services?

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England, making sure services such as care homes, hospitals, and domiciliary care agencies are safe, effective, and meet the needs of the people they support.

CQC inspections are not a box-ticking exercise. They make sure homecare providers are providing compassionate and high-quality person-centred care.

Whether you run a home care or domiciliary care agency, understanding how CQC inspections work can help you prepare, and maintain those all-important high standards to achieve a good or outstanding rating.

Here, we look at how often the CQC inspects home care services, what to expect when they do, and how to successfully prepare for your next CQC inspection.

When Does the CQC Inspect Domiciliary Care Services?

The CQC follows a risk-based approach when deciding how often to inspect services. This means the better your rating, the longer the gap between inspections.

Here’s a general guide on the four CQC ratings and how often you can expect to be inspected:

• Outstanding services perform exceptionally well and are inspected every 2 to 5 years.
• Good services perform well, meet expectations and are also inspected around 2 to 5 years.
• Requires Improvement-rated services do not perform as well as they should and are typically checked within 12 to 18 months.
• Inadequate-rated services perform badly and action has been taken against the responsible person or organisation. These providers get more frequent visits, sometimes as often as every 6 months or sooner.

Other factors can trigger an inspection including:

• Complaints or safeguarding concerns.
• Changes in management or ownership.
• Reports from staff, service users, or local authorities.
• Previous ratings.

To avoid surprises, it’s always best to be inspection-ready by using a CQC inspection checklist and following best practices consistently.

What Do CQC Inspectors Look For?

During an inspection, the CQC focuses on five key questions that make up their fundamental standards. These questions sit at the heart of the way they regulate services and help make sure they focus on the things that really matter to people.

• 1. Is it safe? – Are people protected from harm, abuse, and poor care practices?
• 2. Is it effective? – Are the right processes in place to support positive outcomes?
• 3. Is it caring? – Do staff involve and treat people with compassion, respect, kindness, and dignity?
• 4. Is it responsive? – Can the homecare service adapt to meet people’s needs?
• 5. Is it well-led? – Are there strong leadership and governance structures in place?

Each of the five key questions are further broken down into a further set of questions which the CQC call their ‘key lines of enquiry’. Inspectors use these to decide what they need to focus on and make sure each inspection is consistent across the board.

For homecare services and domiciliary care agencies, inspectors may pay extra attention to things like person-centred care planning, whether clients are treated with dignity and respect, how medication is managed and administered, and if your homecare staff are qualified, competent and experienced.

Having the right documentation and processes in place to show how your homecare agency deals with these areas is key.

Feedback from your clients and their families will also play a big role in the final assessment.

How to Always Be Prepared for a CQC Inspection

Rather than scrambling to prepare at the last minute, it’s a good idea to make compliance a habit. Here are some practical steps to help you stay on track:

• 1. Keep records up to date – Care plans, risk assessments, and policies should always be aligned with CQC standards.
• 2. Invest in staff training – Everyone should know their role in compliance and follow best practices in providing homecare services.
• 3. Encourage feedback – Service users and their families can offer valuable insights to improve the quality of care.
• 4. Carry out internal audits – Use a CQC inspection checklist to perform self-assessments and mock inspections.
• 5. Encourage a culture of transparency – Staff should feel comfortable reporting issues and work together to resolve them.

What Happens After a CQC Inspection?

Once the inspection is complete, home care providers will receive a detailed report with their rating. Here’s a handy recap on what the different ratings mean:

• Outstanding (88 to 100%) – The service goes above and beyond to provide exceptional care.
• Good (63 to 87%) – Meets all requirements and demonstrates strong care practices.
• Requires Improvement (39 to 62%) – Some areas need work to fully meet CQC standards.
• Inadequate – (38% or lower) - Major concerns need urgent action and the service may face enforcement measures.

If you feel your rating is unfair, you have the right to request a ‘factual accuracy check’ or appeal the decision.

Either way, continuous improvement should be the goal to keep providing excellent care to achieve and maintain a ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ rating.

Look closely at the feedback from the inspection to see where there are gaps in your provision, or any areas that could do with tightening up. You could even go back over past CQC inspections for the bigger picture and to see where you did well (or not so well).

Keep Your Homecare Agency Ever-Ready for CQC Inspections

Being CQC-compliant isn’t just about passing inspections—it’s about making sure your home care clients receive the best person-centred care that they deserve.

Technology has an important role to play. By taking a proactive approach and embracing digital tools, you can spend less time on paperwork and more time focusing on delivering high-quality care. Dedicated all-in-one homecare software can help streamline processes, reduce admin time, and make compliance and preparing for inspections much easier to manage.

Want to make sure your service is always ready for CQC inspections?

Tagtronics Care have been around for the last 25 years supporting hundreds of homecare agencies like yours through many a CQC inspection.

Why not give one of our friendly team a call on 01254 819205 or email howcanwehelp@tagtronics.co.uk for a no-obligation demo of our software?