CQC and Ofsted · England
We are the people care providers call when it matters.
We work with CQC and Ofsted registered providers — and with the people about to become one. Registration, inspection, turnaround, growth and sales, across adults' and children's services alike. One team for every stage, including the stages nobody warned you about.
The first call is free, with no obligation, and nobody chases you afterwards.
Start with what is happening
Which of these sounds like today?
You do not need to know the name of the service. Choose the sentence closest to the problem on your desk.
You want to start, and the application makes no sense.
Whether you need to register at all, with which regulator, under which activity, and what has to exist before you apply.
Inspection is coming and you are not sure what they will find.
Mock inspections, audits, evidence and governance — for CQC and for Ofsted. We look at it the way an inspector will, before they do.
It has already gone wrong.
A poor rating or judgement, a warning notice, a safeguarding, an embargo on referrals. We have taken services back from all of them.
You are busy, and still not making money.
What an hour of your care or a week of your placement actually costs, what you are being paid for it, and how to close the gap.
You are ready to buy, or ready to be done.
Valuation, off-market opportunities, due diligence, and a sale handled quietly so your staff hear it from you first.
Free · no email address
Not ready to talk yet? Check where you stand first.
Eight short decision tools, one for each part of the work. Each takes a few minutes and gives you a straight answer and a first step.
Adults' services
Registration, variation, inspection preparation and turnaround under the single assessment framework.
- Domiciliary and live-in care
- Residential and nursing homes
- Supported living and complex care
- Learning disability and autism
- Mental health and dementia
- Day care and older people's services
Children's services
Registration and inspection readiness against the Quality Standards — a different regulator, different timescales, and a different set of expectations.
- Children's homes
- Supported accommodation, 16 and 17
- Semi-independent provision
- Mother and baby provision
- Short breaks
- Solo and bespoke placements
Free first-step guide · No email address
What should happen next?
Choose the situation closest to yours. You will get the first practical step and a short list of what to put on the desk — without filling in a form.
- 01Your situation
- 02First step
- 03What to gather
Choose one
What to gather
This guide does not ask for contact details and stores nothing. It helps you choose the right starting point; it does not diagnose a business from a few buttons, and it is not regulatory or legal advice.
What that has looked like
Three recent pieces of work. Names withheld, because most of this is nobody else's business.
Grow
£22,000
Off a £52,000 insurance premium
A provider was paying just over £52,000 a year to insure the business. One ten-minute phone call — them, us and their insurer — took £22,000 off it.
Comply
Registered for the wrong thing entirely
A provider came to us registered for supported living, on the advice of a previous consultant. What they were actually running was a residential care home. We put the registration right.
Property
She inherited a care business and wanted to stay a landlady
Property came to her that she had no wish to operate. We found a care provider to take the lease and run it, so she could remain the landlord and nothing else.
Elsewhere: varied registrations and extended properties · acquired and designed buildings for care · assembled clinical multidisciplinary teams for providers who had none · supported owners through insolvency alongside their practitioners · negotiated funding and discounts with local authorities.
Who you will be working with
Between us we have registered services, run them, been inspected from the inside, bought and sold them, and been in the room when it went wrong. It is a deliberately multi-disciplinary set-up.
That matters because most of what goes wrong in a care business is not a compliance problem. It is a money problem, a staffing problem or a commissioning problem that arrives dressed as a compliance problem. Telling those apart quickly is most of the job — and it is why you will speak to someone who has done the thing you need doing, rather than whoever happens to be free.
The disciplines around the table
Clinical and care practice
Registered mental nurses · Trainers
Learning disabilities, children's services, mental health and complex care. People who have written the care plan and defended it to an inspector.
Registered managers
And nominated individuals
Registration held in their own name. They have carried the accountability rather than observed it, and know what an inspector asks next because they have been asked it.
Quality and inspection
The other side of the clipboard
Auditor and inspector experience — what is actually being looked for, and what an inspector does with what they find.
Commissioning and contracts
The local authority side
People who have written the specification and scored the tenders. They know how the buyer thinks, because they were the buyer.
Finance and business
Board level and doctoral level
Twenty-five years across finance, operations and workforce, globally and at board level. Costings, projections, funding, invoice discounting and growth.
Workforce and recruitment
Safe recruitment · Sponsor licences · TUPE
Personnel files that survive scrutiny, overseas recruitment, and staff transfers when a business changes hands.
Design and planning
Architects and architectural designers
Planning use, suitability and conversion cost. Layouts that survive an inspection, and visuals of schemes not yet built.
The wider network
Beyond the team
Solicitors, insolvency practitioners, lenders, brokers and accountants who know this sector — and whom we are willing to put in front of our own clients.
Some of us have done very well in business. Some of us have done badly and learned considerably more from that. Several have come from the corporate world and brought the discipline with them. It is a deliberate mix — a service that flourished and a service that failed teach you different things, and you need both to be useful to someone.
What happens after you get in touch
The reason most people put off ringing a consultant is that they do not know what they are starting. So here is the whole of it.
01
You tell us what has happened
Thirty minutes, no charge. We ask questions and you do most of the talking. Nothing is sold on this call and nobody chases you afterwards.
02
We tell you what we would do
In plain English and in writing, within two working days. Including when the answer is that you do not need us, or need someone else entirely.
03
You decide, on a fixed price
A defined piece of work for a figure agreed before it starts. No open-ended retainers and no notice period you cannot get out of.
04
We do it with you, not to you
Your manager stays in the room throughout. The point is that when we leave, you can run it without us — and without ringing us every month.
If we are not the right people for it, we will say so on the first call.
We would rather lose half an hour than take work we cannot do well. It is also how we stay worth recommending.
Tell us what has happened. We will tell you what we would do.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation and no script. If it is not something we can help with, we will say so and point you at whoever can.
Text or WhatsApp
07426 919823If it is easier to write it down than say it out loud, send a message. It reaches the same person.
Also from us
Two more things we do. Both are matching problems — a building and an operator, a service and a manager — and the sector is oddly bad at putting the two halves together.
Care property
A building with nobody to run it. Or an operator with nowhere to go.
We put the two together, and we know what makes a house work as a care setting before anyone spends money on it — planning use, suitability, conversion cost. And where a scheme does not exist yet, we build it in visuals so a commissioner can walk through it anyway.
Registered managers
You cannot open without one. You cannot stay open without a good one.
The hardest appointment in the sector, and we work both sides of it. We find managers for providers who need one in post. We prepare, support and place managers who are worth more than the service they are currently holding together.
Not ready to talk yet
Three other ways to start
Plenty of people are not ready for a phone call, and that is fine. Nothing here needs one.
The store
Policy and registration packs
Editable, current, and written for the service you are actually running. Delivered immediately, no consultancy attached.
Browse the storeResources
Guides written in plain English
Registration, inspection outcomes, pricing, selling. Written for people who have to do the thing, not for other consultants.
Read the guidesCurrent opportunities
Care businesses available now
Off-market and confidential. Tell us your criteria and we will send the ones that match before they are advertised.
See what is availableFree tools
Twenty decision tools, two minutes each
Registration, inspection, pricing, property, planning. Answer a few questions and get a straight answer. No email address, no sign-up.
Try the free tools