October 21st 2025
By Ailsa Colquhoun
CQC launches new-look regulation plan
CQC is consulting on new plans to assess health and care services, make judgements, and award ratings.
The proposals in the consultation aim to address the concerns raised by CQC review author Dr Penny Dash and former chief inspector of hospitals Professor Sir Mike Richards. The changes aim to create a clearer, simpler, and more trusted framework, built through engagement, collaboration, and co‑design with those who deliver and use services.
There are six proposals in two key areas:
Frameworks and guidance for assessing providers
- Re-introduce rating characteristics
These are clear descriptions of what each rating level (such as good or requires improvement) looks like in practice. They will help to provide a better understanding of what each rating means.
- Replace quality statements with assessment questions
These questions will be similar to the previous key lines of enquiry (KLOEs) and will support the rating characteristics by guiding how we assess quality.
- Develop sector-specific frameworks
These will include detailed content and guidance tailored to a specific health or care sector, so providers can better understand our expectations for their sector, as well as consistent core content that would be included across all frameworks.
- Simplify the content of the frameworks
We’ll remove duplicate or overlapping content and make the language clearer and easier to apply in practice.
Judgements and awarding ratings
- Judgements at the key question level
We propose to make judgements directly at the key question level with reference to the rating characteristics. We will no longer award lower-level scores to drive our key question ratings
Read the consultation document and submit your response through our online platform.
Please respond by 5pm on 11 December 2025 online.
