Do you need to register with CQC?
If your agency provides personal care to people in their own homes, you must register with CQC. Personal care means help with things like washing, dressing, toileting and eating.
Providing a regulated activity without registration is a criminal offence.
If your agency provides personal care to people in their own homes, you must register with CQC. Providing a regulated activity without registration is a criminal offence.
The difficulty is that "personal care" has a precise legal meaning, and it isn't the everyday one. A great many people who contact me are genuinely unsure which side of the line they fall on — and some have been trading for months on the wrong assumption.
What counts as personal care
CQC's definition covers physical assistance with:
eating or drinking, including administering parenteral nutrition
toileting, including in relation to menstruation
washing or bathing
dressing
oral care
care of skin, hair and nails — except nail care provided by a chiropodist or podiatrist
It also covers prompting and supervising someone to do any of those things, but only where that person cannot decide for themselves about doing it without being prompted and supervised.
That last point is the one people miss. If you're prompting someone who has capacity and simply likes a reminder, that isn't personal care. If you're prompting someone who couldn't initiate the task themselves — because of dementia, say, or a learning disability — it is, and you need to be registered.
Companionship and domestic help
If you only provide housing support or social support — shopping, cleaning, company, trips out — you don't need to register. None of those appear in the definition of personal care.
The risk is drift. A companionship service that starts out making tea and chatting ends up helping someone to the toilet because they asked, or helping with dressing on a bad day. The moment that becomes part of what you provide, you're carrying on a regulated activity.
Medication
Supporting someone to administer, prompt or supervise medicines does not on its own require registration. If medication support is genuinely all you do, and you provide none of the personal care tasks listed above, you're outside the regulated activity.
In practice, few home care services stay that narrow.
Live-in care
Live-in care isn't a separate category in CQC's rules. The test is the same: is personal care being provided, and is your organisation directing or managing the person providing it?
A live-in care agency that employs carers, places them with clients and manages the care needs to register. An introduction service that matches a self-employed live-in carer to a family and then steps back may not — see below.
Introductory agencies
Introductory agencies do not need to register, because they have no ongoing role in the personal care provided once the carer has been introduced.
But "ongoing role" is defined tightly, and this is where agencies get caught. According to CQC, these activities would require registration:
monitoring the service care workers provide, including gathering feedback and using it to advise or direct how care is carried out — the frequency of visits, the type of care, the way it's given
arranging rotas on behalf of people receiving care
taking responsibility for replacing a care worker, where you arrange absence cover without the client deciding
continuing to charge for the service after a one-off introduction fee, other than fees paid in instalments or for payroll
reviewing and updating someone's care needs when they haven't asked you to
making changes to active care plans, whether or not you consult the person
requiring care workers to attend supervision, coaching or mentoring you provide about the care; to wear your uniform, badge or logo; or to use your paperwork, tools or equipment
By contrast, these do not amount to an ongoing role:
vetting care workers' suitability, qualifications, skills and experience before taking them onto your books
helping someone clarify their care requirements, as long as you don't then monitor outcomes or the care worker's performance
pointing people towards general training that isn't person-specific
advising on tax, health and safety, the job role, or how regulation works
charging a one-off introduction fee
checking the client is happy with your introduction service — not with the care itself
introducing a replacement care worker when the client asks you to
running payroll as a separate, separately charged service
The uniform and paperwork point surprises people most. Branding your introduced carers looks like good practice and reads to CQC as control.
Self-employed carers and personal assistants
An individual care worker doesn't need to register if they are directly employed by the person or a related third party, without an employment agency involved, and they work wholly under that person's direction and control.
Two further conditions matter:
they must work as individuals, not in partnership. Two or more carers who share profits, losses, costs, liability or decisions about care planning and absence cover are almost certainly a partnership — and partnerships providing personal care must register
carers can coordinate around a shared client without being a partnership, but each needs a separate contract with that person, and the client must retain control of absence cover and set out what each carer does
If you do both
Some providers carry on regulated activity alongside exempt activity. CQC only regulates and inspects the regulated part — but you must keep your records clearly separated so you can show which is which when asked.
Still not sure?
CQC's own advice is to take professional or legal advice, or to contact them, if you're unsure.
If you’re not sure which side of the line your service falls on, send me a short description of what you provide and I’ll tell you straight whether you need to register. There’s no charge for that conversation, and plenty of people come away knowing they don’t need me at all. Get in touch.
How CQC assesses home care applications in 2026
This is the part most guides haven't caught up with, and it matters more than anything else on this page.
Since 1 July 2025, CQC checks home care applications in two stages:
Stage one: initial checks
Step 1 — application review. CQC checks that your application forms and statement of purpose are complete, and that all required supporting documents have been submitted.
Step 2 — supporting documents review. If you pass step 1, CQC reviews your documents to check they are complete, accurate, relevant to the service you're applying for, and in line with its supporting documents requirements.
Fail either step and CQC rejects the application and emails you to explain why.
Stage two: assessment
Only now does CQC decide whether your application shows you can deliver care that meets the regulations. At this stage CQC may interview you and your registered manager — by telephone, online or face to face — and may visit your premises.
The part that catches people out
In CQC's own words, a rejected application can be corrected and resubmitted, but "this will count as a new application and will not keep its place in the queue."
So a missing policy doesn't cost you a week. It puts you at the back of a queue you've already been waiting in. CQC introduced this specifically to clear a backlog of applications over 10 weeks old.
How long does CQC registration take?
CQC does not publish a number of weeks. Its guidance says only that it conducts "a rigorous registration assessment that can take a few months", and that applications are assessed in the order received.
Be wary of anyone quoting a precise figure as though it came from CQC. It didn't.
CQC doesn’t publish a timescale, and in my experience the honest answer is that it varies enormously. I’ve seen fast-tracked healthcare applications registered within four weeks. I’ve also seen home care providers waiting six months.
The gap between those two isn’t luck. It comes down to whether the application was complete and accurate when it arrived, what service type it was, and whether there was a genuine case for urgency. Everything else is queue position — and since July 2025, a rejected application loses its place in that queue and starts again at the back.
So the thing worth planning around isn’t CQC’s speed. It’s whether your application passes the initial checks first time.
You cannot manage regulated activities until CQC confirms your registration. Plan your lease, recruitment and launch around that.
How much does CQC registration cost?
CQC's own fees
There is no fee to submit an application. Once registered, you pay an annual regulatory fee.
For community social care — which includes domiciliary care — CQC calculates it per location:
£239 + (number of service users × £54.305)
There's a ceiling of £92,558, which applies at 1,700 service users or more.
Worked examples:
Service users Approximate annual fee
5 £511
10 £782
20 £1,325
50 £2,954
100 £5,670
CQC establishes your service user numbers by emailing registered managers and nominated individuals the month before invoicing, and sends an invoice with your exact fee.
A note on dates: the figures above come from CQC's published table, which is labelled 2024/25. CQC's fees page states that the 2019/20 fees scheme "remains valid until further notice". Check CQC's current page before budgeting.
The costs people forget
CQC’s fee is the easy part to plan for. What catches new providers out is everything else — most of it payable before you have a single client.
DBS Checks - The DBS fee is £20 for a basic or standard check and £41 for an enhanced check with barred lists, which is what care staff need. Most providers apply through an umbrella body, which adds an administration fee per check. Budget for every member of staff, not just the first few.
Public and employer liability insurance - You need a quote or certificate to submit with your application, so this is an early cost rather than a launch-day one. Premiums depend on your turnover projection, staff numbers and the care you intend to provide.
Your registered manager - This is usually the largest single cost and the one most often underestimated. A registered manager must be named in your application and ready for interview, which means you may be paying a salary for weeks or months before you have any income. If they don’t yet hold a Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Adult Care, factor in the cost and the time to complete it.
Policies and procedures - You’ll need every policy on CQC’s list, and they must be accurate for your service. Buying a template pack is cheaper than having policies written for you, but templates are rejected when they don’t match what you’ve said elsewhere in your application. Whichever route you take, the real cost is the time spent adapting them properly.
Training - Mandatory training has to be in place before you deliver care, not after. That includes the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism, safeguarding, moving and handling, medication and infection prevention and control. Costs vary by provider and by whether you train in person or online.
Care planning and rostering software - Not a legal requirement, but CQC will want to see how you’ll plan care, manage rotas and keep records. Most systems charge monthly per user or per client, so the cost grows as you do.
The cost nobody budgets for: time - Every month between starting your application and being registered is a month of paying for some of the above with no income coming in. That’s why a rejected application is so expensive. It isn’t the paperwork — it’s another month or two of standing still.
Read more on financial forecasting here.
Every document you need
Documents every provider must send
Statement of purpose
Complaints policy
Consent policy and procedure
Equality, diversity and human rights policy
Governance and quality assurance policies
Infection prevention and control policy
Medicines management and prescribing policy, including transportation of patient medication
Recruitment policy
Safeguarding policy and procedure
Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
Building control final certificate, if your application includes locations needing building regulations approval
Extra documents for home care agencies
Business plan and financial forecast
Evidence of legal occupancy
Service user guides
Staff training plan
You must also complete the additional form for personal care providers, available from CQC's provider forms page.
If you support autistic people or people with a learning disability
You'll also need a positive behaviour support policy and a restraint policy, plus the additional form for providers of services for autistic people and people with a learning disability.
One thing you don't need
CQC requires a financial viability statement from most applicants — but home care agencies are explicitly exempt, along with corporate providers, NHS trusts, care homes and supported living services.
If you've been told you need one to register a domiciliary agency, or been quoted for one, check that advice against CQC's guidance.
Documents to have ready but not send
CQC asks you not to submit these, but to keep them ready in case an inspector asks. If you can't produce them on request, your application may be delayed.
Duty of candour policy
Freedom to speak up / whistleblowing / confidential reporting policy
List of risk assessments
Person centred care planning policy
Reportable incidents policy
Risk management policy
Sample care contract
Sample care plan
Staffing structure and rotas
Why applications get rejected
CQC rejected 28,781 applications at the first check. See my blog post about this here.
What’s striking is how few of those failures are about the quality of care being proposed. They’re about documents that don’t hold together. Here are the four patterns I see most.
1. Mismatched documents
The application form says one thing, the business plan says another. Different service user numbers, a different start date, a different description of what you’ll provide. CQC reads these documents side by side, and any contradiction raises the question of which version is true.
What to do instead: before you submit, read every document together in one sitting and check the facts that appear more than once — service type, regulated activities, service user numbers, locations, start dates, who holds which role. They must say the same thing everywhere.
2. Generic policies that don’t match your service
Template policies bought as a pack and submitted unchanged. They’re easy to spot: they describe a service that isn’t yours, sometimes a care home when you’re applying as a home care agency, and they don’t align with your statement of purpose.
What to do instead: templates are a reasonable starting point, but every policy must describe how your service will actually work. If your statement of purpose says you’ll do something, your policies need to explain how. If a policy describes something you don’t do, take it out.
3. A registered manager who can’t demonstrate knowledge of the service
This is the most common reason I see applications fail at the assessment stage. The manager is qualified on paper but can’t talk convincingly about this particular service — the people it will support, the risks involved, how the care will be delivered day to day, or how they’ll know it’s safe.
What to do instead: your registered manager needs to know the service as well as you do, and be able to evidence their knowledge and skills for that specific service type. Being an experienced manager elsewhere isn’t enough. Go through the application together, and make sure they can speak to every part of it in their own words.
4. A financial forecast that doesn’t match the business model
Home care agencies don’t need a financial viability statement, but you do need a business plan and financial forecast — and this is where many fall down. The forecast doesn’t reflect the business being described, or it doesn’t cover a full 12 months.
What to do instead: forecast 12 months, and make the numbers follow the business model. If your plan says you’ll start with ten service users and grow to forty, the forecast should show that, with staffing costs that rise accordingly. Someone reading the forecast should recognise the same business the rest of your application describes.
The thread running through all four: CQC isn’t looking for perfect documents. It’s looking for a consistent, credible picture of a service that will meet the regulations. Each of these failures breaks that picture.
And since July 2025, breaking it is costly. A rejected application doesn’t get corrected in place — it goes back to the end of the queue as a new application.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to register if I only provide companionship and housework? No. Housing support and social support — shopping, cleaning, company, trips out — aren’t personal care, so they don’t require registration on their own. The trigger is personal care: physical help with washing, bathing, dressing, toileting, eating and drinking, oral care, or skin, hair and nail care. It also covers prompting and supervising those tasks where the person can’t decide to do them without being prompted.
Watch for drift. Companionship services often start helping with a bit more over time, and the moment personal care becomes part of what you provide, you need to be registered.
Is there a fee to apply to CQC? No. There's no application fee. You pay an annual regulatory fee once you're registered, calculated as £239 plus £54.305 per service user, per location.
How long does CQC registration take for a home care agency? CQC doesn’t publish a timescale. Its guidance says the assessment “can take a few months” and that applications are handled in the order received.
In practice the range is wide. I’ve seen fast-tracked healthcare applications registered within four weeks, and home care providers waiting six months. The difference usually comes down to whether the application was complete and accurate when it arrived — because a rejected one goes back to the end of the queue.
Do I need a financial viability statement? No. Home care agencies are exempt from CQC's financial viability statement requirement. You do still need a business plan and financial forecast.
What happens if my application is rejected? You can correct and resubmit, but CQC treats it as a new application and it loses its place in the queue — which is why getting it right first time matters so much.
Can I start trading before I'm registered? No. You cannot manage regulated activities until CQC confirms your registration, and providing a regulated activity without registration is a criminal offence.
Do I need a consultant? Not necessarily, and I’d rather tell you that than sell you something you don’t need.
Plenty of people register successfully on their own. If you have the time to read CQC’s guidance properly, you write clearly, your service is straightforward, and you have an experienced registered manager who knows the service inside out, you can do this yourself. The guidance is all published, and this page points to most of it.
Support tends to pay for itself when: you’re registering a more complex service, such as one supporting autistic people or people with a learning disability; you’ve already been rejected once; you’re working to a deadline, because a lease is running or a contract depends on it; your registered manager hasn’t been through the process before; or you simply don’t have the hours, and every week of delay is costing you more than the support would.
If you’re somewhere in between, a review of an application you’ve prepared yourself is usually the sensible middle ground.
Most applications that fail don’t fail on the care. They fail on documents that don’t hold together, and that’s a fixable problem — whether you fix it yourself using this guide or you’d rather someone checked it first.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes before you submit, or support through the whole process, you can see how I work and what it costs on my CQC Registration Support page. If you’re not sure what you need yet, book a free readiness call and we’ll work it out.