Quick question: when was your service last inspected? If you’re not entirely sure, or if the honest answer is “a while ago,” you’re not alone.

You might not even be rated at all.

 

The data on this is starker than most providers realise. The Homecare Association’s most recent analysis found that 83.5% of community care services, homecare and supported living, have no current CQC rating. More than a third have never been assessed since the day they registered. That’s not a small administrative gap. It’s the majority of the sector operating without an up-to-date, independent verdict on the quality of what they do.

Here’s what’s actually going on, why it matters more now than it has in years, and what to do about it.

The Highlights:

 

• Most community care services have no current CQC rating. 83.5% of homecare and supported living locations are unrated or holding a rating four or more years old, up sharply from 60% in 2024 and 70% in 2025.
• CQC’s inspection activity crashed and is now recovering fast. Assessments fell from around 16,000 a year pre-pandemic to roughly 7,000 by 2023/24. CQC has since cut its backlog from 500 unpublished reports to just 4, and is running assessments 50% up year on year.
• That recovery means more services will be inspected soon, not fewer. CQC is now explicitly prioritising services that have never been assessed since registration and ratings older than six years. If either applies to you, assume you’re near the front of the queue.
• Ratings under the new framework look tougher, but that’s partly by design. CQC has been deliberately targeting higher-risk services first, so early figures under the new Single Assessment Framework (26.4% Requires Improvement, 4.1% Inadequate) look worse than the wider sector picture, not because quality has collapsed overnight.

 

The scale of the gap

 

Let’s put some real numbers next to this. The Homecare Association’s June 2026 report, using CQC’s own data, found that 36.9% of community care locations had never been assessed at all, and a further 46.6% were holding a rating that was four to ten years old. Only 16.5% held anything you’d call current.

That’s deteriorated fast. In August 2024, 60% of homecare providers had no current or recent rating. By September 2025, it was 70%. By May 2026, it was 83.5%. The number of community services holding an up-to-date rating has more than halved in two years, from over 5,000 to around 2,400.

Some of this comes down to sheer arithmetic. The Homecare Association calculates CQC would need to complete around 406 community assessments a month just to keep pace with services needing a refresh. Right now, it’s managing closer to 96. Some services registered years ago are still waiting for their very first inspection.

This isn’t just a paperwork problem either. The Association has been vocal about the real-world consequences: good providers are losing council contracts and tenders simply because they don’t have a rating to point to, sometimes losing out to unrated competitors offering a lower price with no quality track record behind it.

Why CQC’s activity dropped in the first place

 

None of this happened by accident. In 2024, Dr Penny Dash’s independent review found the CQC “not fit for purpose.” Inspection numbers had fallen from over 16,000 a year in 2019/20 to around 7,000 by 2023/24. Registration backlogs had ballooned, with over half of applications taking longer than the 10-week guideline. Some services were still holding ratings from 2015, nine years old and counting.

The regulator’s own assessment framework was part of the problem. The Single Assessment Framework, rolled out from 2023, was widely judged to be poorly explained and barely piloted before it went live. A review by Professor Sir Mike Richards backed this up, and CQC is now replacing it with four sector-specific frameworks, including one built specifically for adult social care, expected to land by the end of 2026 or into 2027.

The recovery is real, and it changes your risk profile

 

Here’s the part providers often miss: CQC’s operational picture has genuinely improved, and that has direct consequences for anyone who hasn’t been inspected in a while.

By the end of 2025, CQC had slashed its backlog of unpublished assessment reports from around 500 down to just 4. It set itself a target of 9,000 published assessments by September 2026 and was already ahead of that target, with over 4,300 published by December 2025. It ran 50% more assessments in November 2025 than in the same month the year before.

CQC has also been explicit about who it’s prioritising as it ramps back up: services that have never been assessed since they registered, services registered more than a year without any assessment, and ratings older than six years. If you tick any of those boxes, the honest read is that your odds of an inspection in the next 12 months are meaningfully higher than they’ve been at any point since 2020.

Under the new framework, early ratings look tougher than the historical picture: 67% Good and 2.1% Outstanding, but 26.4% Requires Improvement and 4.1% Inadequate. Read that carefully before it worries you unduly. CQC has been deliberately assessing higher-risk services first under the new approach, so this snapshot is skewed toward services that were already a concern, not a sign that quality across the board has fallen off a cliff. The older, full-population picture (78% Good, 4% Outstanding, 16% Requires Improvement, 1% Inadequate) is still the more representative baseline for the sector as a whole, for now.

What this means for your service, practically

 

• If you haven’t been inspected in years, or ever, don’t wait for CQC to come to you. Get ahead of it. A mock inspection gives you an honest, current picture of exactly where your evidence would hold up and where it wouldn’t, so you’re not finding out the gaps at the same moment as the regulator.
• If you’re on Requires Improvement or Inadequate, the old multi-year drift no longer applies. Re-inspection timelines have historically been slow, sometimes over a year, but with CQC’s activity accelerating, build your improvement evidence on a 6 to 12 month horizon rather than assuming you have longer.
• If you’ve genuinely improved since your last rating, say so. Don’t sit and wait. You can request a reassessment, and with the evidence to back it up, that’s often the fastest way to convert real improvement into a rating that actually reflects it.
• If you’re bidding for council contracts, use your rating as the differentiator it is. With so many competitors unrated, a current Good or Outstanding rating is one of the few objective things separating you from someone offering a cheaper, unverified service.

 

How Kata Care can help

 

This is exactly where our mock inspections earn their keep. Run by consultants who include current and former CQC inspectors, a mock inspection gives you a proper, honest audit against the same areas CQC will actually look at, governance, safety, care planning, staff and family conversations, with a full report, a scorecard, and clear, practical recommendations, usually within around two weeks.

If it’s been a while since your last inspection, or you’ve never had one at all, that’s precisely the situation to get ahead of, not wait out. And if you’re already sitting on a Requires Improvement or Inadequate rating and need help building a genuine, evidenced case for improvement, we can support that too.

Get in touch for a free initial consultation, and let’s find out exactly where you stand before CQC does. Book a free consultation with Kata Care →