This week's key regulatory and sector developments from CQC, NHS England and WHO Keeping up with regulatory and sector developments is essential for care providers. This week's update highlights three important developments that care-home managers and staff should be aware of, covering safe care and risk management, winter flu preparedness, and cognitive health and dementia care. This Week at a Glance Organisation Updates CQC A registered manager was ordered to pay £2,333 aft

What adult social care providers need to know about the Mental Health Act 2025 : what's changed, what's coming, and what to act on now.

If you're trying to predict what CQC inspectors ask in 2026, the honest answer is that there's no fixed script. What inspectors actually do is gather evidence across six set categories, then check whether what staff say lines up with what they observe and what the records show. Understanding those categories tells you far more about a 2026 assessment than any list of predicted questions ever will. Why this matters now CQC has said it is ahead of its target to publish 9,000 as

Social care rarely leads the national conversation. Right now, it does. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July 2026, and he has been explicit that social care reform sits at the centre of his agenda, not as a side issue to the NHS, but as the condition for fixing it. Alongside this, the government has brought forward the final report of Baroness Louise Casey's independent review of adult social care, moving publication from 2028 to summer 2027. For registered managers, pr

The Dementia Training Standards Framework sets out three tiers. Tier 1 is dementia awareness for everyone working in health and social care. Tier 2 is for staff who regularly work directly with people living with dementia. Tier 3 is for supervisors, managers and leaders. The framework was updated in February 2026. That last sentence is the reason to read the rest. The framework has been the national reference for dementia training since 2015, and a refreshed version landed in

Face-to-face training earns its cost when the skill is a performance rather than a body of knowledge. Dementia care, distressed behaviour and de-escalation sit in that group, and NICE recommends face-to-face training and mentoring for staff supporting people living with dementia. For factual and procedural content, eLearning is usually the better spend. Most services do not have a training budget problem. They have an allocation problem. The trainer’s day rate is the small nu

An honest guide to the rating process review Every provider rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate asks the same question in the first week. Can we fight this? The honest answer is: sometimes, but far less often than people hope, and only on one specific ground. This article sets out exactly when the answer is yes, so you can stop wondering and put your energy where it will actually change your rating. Start here: which situation are you in? Read these three before anything

Expanded sample report: 26 coded inspection and assessment reports, plus an 8-case deterioration cohort Adult social care, England, 2023 to July 2026 Executive summary This report expands the earlier 11-case pilot to 26 adult social care services holding an overall CQC rating of Requires Improvement, and adds a separate cohort of 8 services that fell from Requires Improvement to Inadequate. All figures carry a denominator of 26 or fewer and remain indicative rather than secto

If you believe your CQC report contains errors, you have three formal routes open to you: a factual accuracy challenge on the draft report (within 10 working days), a ratings review after publication (within 15 working days), and, in rare cases, judicial review. Each has a different purpose, a different deadline and a different standard of evidence. This guide walks through all three. Why this matters now CQC has significantly increased its pace of inspection activity through

A Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) sets out, in specific and measurable terms, what a provider will change, by when, and how it will prove the change has happened. Whether CQC has asked for one under Regulation 17(3) or a provider is building one proactively, the same discipline applies: evidence the problem, set a SMART action, name an owner, and show closure with data, not intention. What CQC actually means by an improvement plan CQC doesn't mandate a single document called a

Duty of candour is not a form you complete after something goes wrong. It is a fundamental standard, one of the areas CQC pays particular attention to, and it sits at the heart of how inspectors judge whether a service is genuinely open and safe. For registered managers, that means duty of candour has to work as a live operational process, not a policy document that only gets read after an incident. This guide sets out what the law requires, how to recognise when the duty app

By Manu Thomas, Advanced Clinical Practitioner, CQC Specialist Advisor, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow, NICE Associate

By Manu Thomas, Advanced Clinical Practitioner, CQC Specialist Advisor, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow, NICE Associate | Last updated: [Date]

The Employment Rights Act 2025 brings the biggest changes to UK employment law in a generation, phased across 2026 and 2027. For care providers, the changes already in force include day one statutory sick pay, day one paternity and unpaid parental leave, and higher wage rates. The largest changes, guaranteed hours and a shorter unfair dismissal qualifying period, arrive in 2027. Why this matters for care providers Employment law changes hit adult social care harder than almos

PSIRF is the NHS framework for responding to patient safety incidents. It is mandatory under the NHS Standard Contract, not for adult social care providers directly. But its four principles, proportionate, learning-led and compassionate response, increasingly shape what CQC expects to see in how your service handles incidents. Why this matters CQC is back in the field. The regulator completed over 50% more inspections in November 2025 than the year before and is targeting 9,0

CQC is accelerating. The regulator completed over 50% more inspections in November 2025 than the same month a year earlier, and has set a public target of 9,000 assessments by September 2026. If you haven't been inspected under the new framework yet, your window is closing. This guide walks you through the five practical steps to prepare. Why this matters In the space of six months, CQC inspection patterns have shifted dramatically. Services that expected 18-24 months before