CQC 2026: The Assessment Framework Is Changing Again — What Adult Social Care Providers Need to Understand

Adult social care providers could be forgiven for feeling that the language of CQC regulation has changed repeatedly in a relatively short period.

Key lines of enquiry became quality statements.

Inspection became assessment.

Evidence was organised into categories.

Ratings were supported by numerical scores.

Providers were encouraged to understand a single framework intended to operate across very different parts of health and social care.

Now, the direction is changing again.

CQC has completed a further consultation on four draft sector-specific assessment frameworks, including a dedicated framework for adult social care. The consultation closed on 12 June 2026, and CQC intends to refine and test the frameworks during the summer before deciding how they will operate in practice.

The five familiar questions will remain:

• Is the service safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive?
• Is it well-led?

The four rating levels will also remain:

• Outstanding
• Good
• Requires Improvement
• Inadequate

But the structure supporting those judgements is set to change substantially.

Quality statements are expected to be replaced by sector-specific key lines of enquiry.

Detailed rating characteristics are returning.

Numerical scoring is expected to be removed.

And CQC intends to make rating judgements directly at key-question level, supported by professional judgement and clearer descriptions of what each rating should look like.

For providers, the most important point is not simply that the terminology is changing.

It is that CQC is attempting to make the distinction between poor, acceptable, good and exceptional care easier to understand—and easier to evidence.

The opportunity is greater clarity.

The risk is that providers respond by producing another layer of documents without improving the quality, oversight or outcomes those documents are intended to demonstrate.

The strongest response will not be to prepare for a new inspection script.

It will be to make the reality of good care more visible.

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Why Is CQC Changing the Framework Again?

The single assessment framework was intended to simplify regulation.

It brought health and adult social care into one structure and replaced previous key lines of enquiry, prompts and rating characteristics with a shorter set of quality statements describing care at the level of a good service.

The objective was understandable.

Services were becoming increasingly complex, care was being delivered across organisational boundaries and CQC wanted a consistent approach that could operate across different sectors.

But independent reviews, provider feedback and CQC’s own operational experience identified significant problems.

CQC has acknowledged three central weaknesses:

• expectations were not sufficiently clear across every rating level;
• the framework did not reflect sector differences clearly enough;
• and the content needed to become simpler and easier to apply.

The previous quality statements largely described good care. They did not provide the same level of detail about what Outstanding, Requires Improvement or Inadequate care should look like. Providers and assessors therefore lost some of the nuance that had existed within earlier rating characteristics.

The independent review led by Dr Penny Dash also found concerns about the consistency and effectiveness of the single assessment framework. It reported that providers and inspectors struggled with the absence of clear descriptions of good and outstanding care, creating uncertainty about what CQC expected and what organisations needed to do to improve.

This matters because a regulatory framework has several audiences.

It must help inspectors make fair and consistent judgements.

It must help the public understand the quality of a service.

It must help providers know what is expected.

And it should support improvement—not merely identify failure after it has occurred.

A framework that is concise but unclear does not necessarily reduce burden.

It can create more work as providers attempt to interpret broad statements, anticipate different assessor expectations and produce excessive evidence to protect against uncertainty.

CQC’s current reform is therefore not simply a return to old language.

It is an attempt to restore detail and sector relevance while retaining the strongest parts of the newer approach.

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This Is a Draft Direction, Not Yet the Final Operating Framework

The adult social care framework published by CQC is still a draft.

The consultation closed on 12 June, after providers, care workers, people using services and other stakeholders were invited to comment on whether the proposed content:

• supports clearer and more consistent judgements;
• helps providers understand what CQC will examine;
• reflects the breadth of adult social care;
• and gives sufficient attention to inequalities in experiences and outcomes.

CQC said it would review the feedback, refine the framework and pilot it in practice during the summer.

Providers should therefore avoid treating every sentence in the draft as settled regulatory guidance.

Job descriptions do not need to be rewritten overnight.

Policies should not be renamed simply to reflect new headings.

Compliance systems should not be redesigned around unconfirmed requirements.

And organisations should be cautious about anyone presenting the draft framework as though it is already the final assessment methodology.

At the same time, waiting passively would be a mistake.

The overall direction is now clear:

• regulation will become sector-specific again;
• structured questions will replace broad quality statements;
• rating characteristics will return;
• scoring is expected to disappear;
• and the connection between evidence and professional judgement will become more important.

Those principles are strong enough for providers to begin reviewing how clearly their current evidence demonstrates quality.

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What Will Remain the Same?

The visible foundations of CQC assessment are not being replaced.

The five key questions remain

Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led will continue to organise the regulator’s view of quality.

These questions remain the level at which CQC intends to make rating judgements where it has the legal power to rate a service.

This provides continuity.

Providers do not need to abandon the way they organise quality assurance around the five questions.

A service already using Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led within audits, governance meetings or improvement plans can retain that structure.

The more useful question is whether the evidence sitting beneath each heading is strong enough.

The four rating levels remain

CQC will continue to rate eligible services as:

• Outstanding;
• Good;
• Requires Improvement; or
• Inadequate.

What is changing is the level of description supporting each judgement.

Under the single assessment framework, quality statements principally described good care. The new rating characteristics are intended to show what quality looks like across the complete four-point scale.

People’s experiences remain central

The proposed framework retains “I statements” describing the outcomes and experiences people say they expect from good-quality care.

These statements are drawn from the Making It Real framework developed through Think Local Act Personal and people with lived experience of care and support. They are intended to keep CQC’s assessment focused on what care feels like to the person receiving it—not only on what the provider’s systems say should happen.

That is an important point for providers.

A technically complete process can still produce a poor experience.

A care plan may be up to date while the person feels unheard.

A complaints policy may be compliant while families do not believe concerns are welcomed.

A staffing model may meet a calculated requirement while people experience rushed or inconsistent support.

Evidence that stands up must therefore connect organisational systems to human experience.

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What Is Expected to Change?

The draft sector-specific frameworks contain four main components.

CQC proposes retaining the five key questions, adding structured key lines of enquiry, reintroducing rating characteristics and retaining the person-centred “I statements.” Together, CQC describes these elements as its quality indicators.

1. Quality statements will be replaced by key lines of enquiry

Each key question is expected to contain between three and seven supporting questions.

These key lines of enquiry will describe more directly what CQC intends to assess within each area.

For providers familiar with earlier CQC approaches, the term will not be new.

However, the new draft KLOEs are not simply a copy of the pre-2024 framework. They have been developed around current expectations, lived experience, equality, outcomes and learning from the independent reviews.

The practical difference is important.

A broad statement can sometimes leave providers wondering how it will be interpreted.

A structured question requires an answer.

Not only:

Do we have effective governance?

But:

How do leaders know what is happening across the service?

How are risks identified, challenged and followed through?

How does information lead to decisions?

How do those decisions improve people’s care?

That movement from statement to enquiry should encourage providers to examine the complete evidence chain.

2. Rating characteristics will return

CQC proposes detailed descriptions of what care might look like at each rating level.

The regulator says the characteristics are intended to support clearer and more consistent judgements and help providers understand the difference between ratings.

This could be one of the most valuable changes.

A provider does not only need to know what Good looks like.

It needs to understand:

• what weaknesses would move the service towards Requires Improvement;
• what serious or widespread failures could indicate Inadequate care;
• and what sustained impact, leadership and learning would distinguish Outstanding practice.

The draft adult social care framework provides descriptions across those levels rather than relying on one broad statement of expected quality.

It is likely to make gaps more visible.

It should also give stronger providers a clearer basis for demonstrating that their practice goes beyond routine compliance.

3. Numerical scoring is expected to be removed

Under the single assessment framework, evidence scores contributed to quality-statement scores and ultimately to ratings.

CQC’s consultation response indicated strong support for simplifying this process.

The proposed approach removes numerical scoring and returns rating decisions to key-question level, using evidence, professional judgement, rating characteristics and established rating principles.

For providers, this means that producing a large quantity of positive material will not operate like collecting points.

One serious failure may carry considerable significance.

Conflicting evidence will still require interpretation.

The scale, duration and effect of a problem will matter.

And CQC will need to consider the complete picture rather than treating every item of evidence as having an automatic numerical value.

That makes narrative coherence increasingly important.

The evidence across a service needs to make sense together.

4. Supporting guidance will sit alongside the framework

CQC plans to publish separate guidance explaining:

• the scope of each key line of enquiry;
• the subjects considered beneath it;
• the connection to regulations;
• and what good care may look like in different types of service.

Keeping guidance separate will allow CQC to update detailed information more quickly as policy, evidence and practice change, while significant alterations to the assessment framework itself would still require consultation.

This distinction will matter operationally.

The framework will define the central questions and rating expectations.

Supporting guidance will help providers interpret those expectations within care homes, home care, supported living and other adult social care models.

Providers will need to monitor both.

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Greater Clarity Must Not Become Another Checklist

The return of detailed rating characteristics may be welcomed by providers who felt uncertain about what CQC expected.

But detailed descriptions create another risk.

They can become a compliance checklist.

CQC has explicitly said the rating characteristics are intended as a guide rather than a complete list. Not every characteristic will apply to every service, and providers do not need to demonstrate every individual point to achieve a particular rating. CQC may also select the parts of the framework most relevant to the risk, quality and context of an assessment.

That means providers should not create hundreds of folders corresponding to every line in the draft.

Nor should leaders attempt to manufacture evidence for characteristics that do not reflect the service.

The purpose is to understand quality, not to create inspection theatre.

A stronger approach is to ask:

• Which expectations are most relevant to the people we support?
• Where would weak practice create the greatest harm?
• Which aspects of quality are difficult for us to see?
• Where does our evidence depend on one person’s knowledge?
• Are our policies reflected consistently in practice?
• Can we show the effect of our decisions?
• Do people’s experiences support the picture presented by our systems?

This allows the framework to guide improvement without allowing it to dominate the service.

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Why Sector-Specific Regulation Matters

Adult social care is not a smaller version of healthcare.

It operates through relationships, homes, communities, families and long-term support.

A care home is both a regulated service and someone’s home.

Home-care workers enter private environments and often work independently.

Supported-living services must balance safety with tenancy rights, autonomy and control.

Many providers depend on external GPs, pharmacies, community nurses, local authorities and integrated care services over which they have limited direct control.

The quality of care cannot therefore be assessed only through policies and clinical processes.

It must consider:

• choice and independence;
• personal identity;
• relationships;
• communication;
• community involvement;
• dignity;
• positive risk-taking;
• continuity;
• and whether people are living the lives they want.

A sector-specific framework should be better able to reflect those realities than one universal set of statements designed to operate across care homes, hospitals, GP practices and mental-health services.

CQC says the draft frameworks have been developed to create consistent expectations while recognising the important differences between sectors. They are also intended to provide a common language of quality and support clearer conversations between the regulator, providers and people using services.

The value will depend on implementation.

Sector-specific wording alone will not guarantee better regulation.

CQC will still require enough adult social care expertise, consistent assessment practice and sound professional judgement to apply the framework fairly.

But for providers, clearer sector language should make it easier to connect regulatory expectations to day-to-day care.

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Why Providers Should Pay Attention Now

The future framework is still being refined, but CQC’s assessment programme is not standing still.

The regulator has set a target of publishing reports for at least 9,000 assessments across all sectors by September 2026.

Its published programme includes 5,013 adult social care assessments between April 2025 and September 2026, alongside work targeting risk, services with older ratings and providers that have not previously been assessed.

Those assessments should not be confused with the future sector-specific framework.

At this stage, the draft framework still requires refinement, piloting and implementation decisions.

But the volume of regulatory activity creates a clear reason for providers to strengthen evidence now rather than wait for the next methodology to become final.

The regulations have not disappeared.

The five key questions remain.

CQC continues to respond to risk.

And weaknesses in safeguarding, medicines, staffing, consent, governance or leadership will remain important regardless of the exact framework used.

Providers should therefore avoid two extremes.

The first is panic: attempting to rebuild every compliance process around an unconfirmed draft.

The second is complacency: assuming nothing needs to change until CQC announces a final launch date.

A proportionate response sits between the two.

Understand the direction.

Review the evidence.

Strengthen the service.

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Evidence Must Show More Than the Existence of a Process

One of the most important implications of the proposed framework is that stronger descriptions of quality will expose the difference between having a process and knowing that it works.

Consider a medicines audit.

Its existence proves that someone completed a review.

It does not automatically prove:

• errors were identified accurately;
• underlying causes were understood;
• actions were assigned;
• employees changed their practice;
• people remained safe;
• and the improvement was sustained.

The same principle applies across the service.

A policy is not the same as practice

A policy describes what should happen.

Evidence must show that staff understand it, apply it and receive support when circumstances are difficult.

Training completion is not the same as competence

A certificate confirms participation.

Competence requires observation, assessment, feedback and confidence that the employee can perform the responsibility safely.

Feedback collection is not the same as listening

A survey demonstrates that people were asked.

Listening is shown when responses influence decisions and people can see what changed.

An action plan is not the same as improvement

A plan describes intended action.

Improvement requires implementation, review and evidence that the original weakness has reduced.

A positive outcome is not enough without a credible explanation

Providers should be able to show how leadership, practice and systems contributed to the outcome and whether it is consistent across the service.

The new framework should encourage providers to make these connections more explicit.

That is what evidence that stands up looks like.

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What Should Providers Review First?

Providers do not need to begin by reading every line of the draft and creating a document against each one.

A more useful starting point is to examine the areas on which the complete service depends.

1. The reality of people’s experiences

Ask whether leaders receive current, representative and usable information about what care feels like.

That may include:

• direct conversations;
• observation;
• complaints;
• compliments;
• reviews;
• family feedback;
• advocacy;
• surveys;
• resident or service-user meetings;
• and feedback adapted for people with communication differences.

The evidence should not be limited to the easiest people to hear from.

Providers must consider whose voice is absent and what alternative approaches may be needed.

2. The connection between audits and action

Review whether audits genuinely identify risk and improvement.

For each significant finding, leaders should be able to see:

• the issue;
• its significance;
• the action required;
• the person responsible;
• the deadline;
• whether the action occurred;
• and whether improvement was confirmed.

An audit programme without reliable follow-through can create the appearance of governance without its protection.

3. The visibility of leadership

Registered managers often hold extensive knowledge about the service.

The risk arises when the organisation depends entirely on that knowledge remaining in one person’s head.

Boards, directors, trustees and nominated individuals need a reliable view of:

• quality;
• workforce stability;
• incidents;
• safeguarding;
• complaints;
• medicines;
• risks;
• outcomes;
• and improvement activity.

Well-led must be visible above the service as well as within it.

4. The strength of workforce evidence

Providers should know:

• whether staffing is sufficient;
• which skills are available;
• where competence remains uncertain;
• whether supervision is effective;
• how agency workers are prepared;
• and what employees say about culture and leadership.

A training matrix can form part of this picture.

It cannot be the entire picture.

5. The evidence of learning

Review incidents, complaints, safeguarding concerns, errors and near misses.

Look for repetition.

The question is not only whether each event was processed correctly.

It is whether the organisation recognised wider themes and changed something as a result.

6. Equity and inequality

CQC has said the frameworks should help identify and address unequal experiences and outcomes.

Providers should therefore examine whether some people experience poorer access, communication, choice, safety or outcomes because of disability, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, language, economic disadvantage or another aspect of identity or circumstance.

This requires more than an equality policy.

It requires enough information to recognise a difference and enough leadership attention to respond.

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Do Not Rewrite Everything—Test Whether It Works

Framework change often triggers a rush to update policies.

Sometimes that is necessary.

But wholesale rewriting can consume management time without improving care.

Before replacing a document, providers should ask:

• Is the current policy legally accurate?
• Does it reflect the service?
• Do employees know what it requires?
• Is practice consistent with it?
• Can leaders see whether it is working?
• Has guidance or legislation changed?
• Is the weakness the document—or its implementation?

Many providers do not have a policy shortage.

They have a visibility problem.

Important information sits across different systems.

Actions are agreed but not tracked consistently.

Feedback is gathered but not connected to decision-making.

Training is recorded but competence is difficult to prove.

Managers understand the service but boards receive limited operational detail.

The most valuable improvement may therefore be better integration rather than more documentation.

Quality-management systems, compliance platforms, digital care records, feedback tools and specialist consultancy can all support this.

But the solution should be selected according to the problem.

A provider does not need technology merely to reproduce the same disconnected information on a new screen.

It needs support that makes risk, responsibility and improvement clearer.

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What Should Providers Expect from CQC-Support Partners?

Regulatory change will inevitably create a market for:

• CQC consultants;
• mock assessments;
• compliance systems;
• policy libraries;
• quality dashboards;
• auditing services;
• leadership development;
• training;
• and resident-feedback technology.

These services can provide real value.

The strongest will help providers understand and improve the service.

The weakest will encourage them to prepare a performance for the regulator.

A credible partner should be able to explain:

• which provider weakness it addresses;
• how it reflects the service’s actual model of care;
• what evidence it will strengthen;
• how managers will use it after implementation;
• how it supports people’s experiences and outcomes;
• and what will be measurably different.

Useful outcomes might include:

• faster identification of risk;
• clearer action ownership;
• stronger audit follow-through;
• better board oversight;
• more representative feedback;
• improved competence evidence;
• reduced repeated incidents;
• or greater confidence among managers.

Providers should be cautious of any service promising a rating.

No external organisation controls CQC’s judgement.

What a strong partner can do is help the provider understand its position, close genuine gaps and demonstrate improvement more clearly.

That is a much more valuable outcome.

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Ten Questions Care Leaders Should Be Asking Now

Owners, trustees, directors, nominated individuals and registered managers should consider:

1. Can we explain clearly what is changing and what remains in the CQC framework?
2. Are we treating the draft as direction rather than final guidance?
3. Can we show how people’s experiences influence the service?
4. Do our audits lead consistently to action and remeasurement?
5. Can senior leaders see where the greatest quality risks sit?
6. Are policies, training and daily practice telling the same story?
7. What evidence shows that care outcomes are improving?
8. Where are we dependent on one manager’s knowledge?
9. Can we identify inequalities in people’s experiences or outcomes?
10. Are our systems helping us understand quality—or merely storing documents?

These questions require no new framework to answer.

They are fundamental to running a safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led service.

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What Should Providers Do Over the Next 30 Days?

A proportionate response can begin immediately.

Read the draft—but do not convert it into a checklist

Understand its structure, language and direction.

Identify the areas most relevant to the service.

Brief senior leaders and managers

Make sure people understand that the five key questions and ratings remain, while the supporting methodology is being redesigned.

Review one complete evidence chain

Choose an area such as medicines, falls, complaints, safeguarding or staff competence.

Follow it from the original information through to action and outcome.

Identify where quality information is fragmented

Map where audits, incidents, feedback, training and action plans are currently held.

Consider whether leaders can see the complete picture.

Test the experience against the process

Select several important policies and ask whether the lived experience of people and staff confirms that they operate effectively.

Record questions that remain unanswered

Further CQC guidance will follow.

Providers should maintain a short list of practical issues requiring clarification rather than making assumptions.

This creates readiness without unnecessary disruption.

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What Would a Successful Framework Change Look Like?

Success should not be measured by whether providers learn a new set of headings.

It should be visible when:

• people understand what good care should feel like;
• providers understand what CQC expects;
• assessors make more consistent judgements;
• the differences between ratings are clearer;
• sector expertise informs regulation;
• weaknesses are identified earlier;
• and regulatory findings support genuine improvement.

For adult social care providers, success would also mean less time trying to predict what an assessor wants and more time understanding whether the service is working.

A clearer framework should reduce defensive evidence production.

It should help leaders focus on:

• people;
• practice;
• risk;
• outcomes;
• learning;
• and improvement.

Whether it achieves that will depend not only on the published content but on CQC’s implementation, training, technology and consistency.

The draft framework is therefore an important step.

It is not the finished answer.

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The Framework Is Changing—The Purpose of Evidence Is Not

Adult social care should not have to redesign itself every time regulatory terminology changes.

The fundamental purpose remains stable.

People should receive care that is safe, effective, compassionate, responsive to who they are and led by an organisation that understands its responsibilities.

Evidence exists to show whether that is happening.

It should help leaders recognise risk.

It should help staff understand expectations.

It should help organisations learn.

It should help people and families have confidence.

And it should help CQC make fair, transparent judgements.

The draft 2026 framework appears to recognise that providers need more clarity than the single assessment framework delivered.

The return of structured key lines of enquiry and four-level rating characteristics could make expectations easier to understand.

The removal of scoring could place greater emphasis on evidence, context and professional judgement.

And the dedicated adult social care framework should reflect the sector more accurately than one universal structure.

But providers should resist the temptation to solve regulatory change through paperwork alone.

The strongest preparation is not a new inspection folder.

It is a service in which:

• leaders know what is happening;
• risks lead to action;
• feedback leads to change;
• employees are competent and supported;
• improvement can be demonstrated;
• and people’s experiences confirm the provider’s own account of quality.

CQC’s framework is changing again.

The objective for providers should be to make sure the evidence does not depend on which framework is used.

Good care should stand up to scrutiny because it is visible every day.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is CQC replacing the single assessment framework?

CQC has proposed moving away from one framework covering all regulated sectors and introducing four sector-specific frameworks, including one for adult social care. The adult social care framework remained in draft following the consultation closing on 12 June 2026.

Are the five CQC key questions changing?

No. Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led remain central to the proposed approach and will continue to be the level at which CQC makes ratings judgements.

Are CQC quality statements being removed?

Under the draft framework, the current quality statements would be replaced by structured, sector-specific key lines of enquiry. Each key question would contain between three and seven supporting questions.

Is CQC bringing back KLOEs?

Yes. The draft framework reintroduces key lines of enquiry, but they have been redeveloped rather than simply copied from the older adult social care framework.

Will CQC continue using numerical scores?

CQC has proposed removing scoring and returning to direct rating judgements at key-question level, supported by evidence, rating characteristics, professional judgement and rating principles.

What are CQC rating characteristics?

Rating characteristics describe what Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate care might look like. They are intended to guide judgement rather than function as a complete checklist.

Should providers change their systems immediately?

Providers should understand the draft direction and review the strength of their evidence, but should avoid major system or policy changes based solely on an unconfirmed draft. CQC planned to refine and test the framework before implementation.

What is the best way to prepare?

Providers should concentrate on whether their current evidence connects people’s experiences, staff practice, governance processes, leadership decisions and outcomes. The objective should be stronger services and clearer improvement—not additional documents created only for inspection.

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Editorial sources

This feature has been developed using information available by 18 June 2026, preserving the integrity of its backdated publication position.

• Care Quality Commission, Give Your Views on Draft Sector-Specific Assessment Frameworks, consultation closed 12 June 2026.
• Care Quality Commission, Our March Update, published 24 March 2026.
• Care Quality Commission, Purpose of CQC’s Assessment Frameworks, published 14 April 2026.
• Care Quality Commission, Better Regulation, Better Care: Improving Our Assessment Framework.
• Care Quality Commission, Our Initial Response to Our Public Consultation: Better Regulation, Better Care, published 25 March 2026.
• Department of Health and Social Care, Review into the Operational Effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission: Full Report.
• Care Quality Commission, How We Are Working to Rebuild Good Regulation.