Resources · For managers

Notifications: what, when and by whom.

Almost nobody misses a notification because they did not know the rules. They miss it because it happened at half past four on a Friday and two people each thought the other one had sent it.

Free · No email address · Two regulators

Do you have to tell them about this?

Find what happened and get the regulation, the deadline and who else has to be told. The guide above is about building a system that catches these. This is the list the system has to catch.

If your notifiable-events policy names “serious complaint”, “serious illness or accident” or “child absent without authorisation” as triggers, it is written against regulations revoked over a decade ago. That is checkable in thirty seconds, and it is true of a lot of folders.

When it is genuinely arguable, notify. There is no penalty for notifying something that turned out not to be notifiable.

CQC — adults’ services

What has to be notified, on which regulation, and by when.

Current at September 2026. England.

The rule to apply when you are not sure: notify. Failing to notify is a criminal offence carrying a fixed penalty of £1,250 for the provider and £625 for the registered manager — and the penalties are per breach, not per episode. CQC has issued fines of £1,875, £2,500 and £3,750, which are simply multiples. There is no penalty for notifying something that turned out not to be notifiable.

Something happened to someone using the service

Reg 16

A person using the service has died

Without delay

Any death of a service user. Not only unexpected or unexplained deaths.

Reg 18(2)(a),(b)

Someone has been injured

Without delay

Notifiable where, in the reasonable opinion of a health care professional, the injury has caused:

impairment of sensory, motor or intellectual function that is not likely to be temporary
changes to the structure of the body
prolonged pain or prolonged psychological harm
shortening of life expectancy
or the injury required treatment by a health care professional to prevent death, or would have led to one of the above if untreated

The 28-day rule"Prolonged" and "not temporary" both mean lasting, or likely to last, at least 28 continuous days. That is a judgement made at the time on the likely course, not a reason to wait 28 days and see.

Reg 18(2)(e)

Abuse, or an allegation of abuse

Without delay

There is no harm threshold and no substantiation threshold. An allegation is notifiable whether or not it is later upheld.

Theft counts"Abuse" here is defined to include sexual abuse; physical or psychological ill-treatment; theft, misuse or misappropriation of money or property; and neglect or acts of omission causing harm or risk of harm. Money going missing from a service user is a notifiable abuse allegation, and it is routinely treated as a purely internal matter.

Reg 18(2)(f)

The police are involved

Without delay

Any incident reported to, or investigated by, the police.

Reporting it yourself triggers the dutyYou do not wait to see whether the police investigate. If you called them, that is the trigger.

Reg 18(4A)–(4B)

A deprivation of liberty application

On the outcome

Notifiable where you have requested a standard authorisation, or an application has been made to court to deprive someone of their liberty.

Notify on the outcome, not the applicationThe duty is timed to when the outcome is known, or to the point of withdrawal — the notification must state the date and nature of the request, whether an urgent authorisation preceded it, the outcome or reason for withdrawal, and the date. A great many providers notify on applying, which is the wrong moment.

Domiciliary and supported livingDoLS is not available outside care homes and hospitals — so for these services the route is a court application, and that limb has its own notification. "We have no DoLS" does not mean you have no duty.

Something happened to the service

Reg 18(2)(g)

An event that stops you running the service safely

Without delay

Any event preventing, or appearing likely to threaten to prevent, your ability to carry on safely or in line with your registration — including these named examples:

insufficient suitably qualified, skilled and experienced staff
loss of electricity, gas, water or sewerage for more than 24 continuous hours
physical damage to premises with a detrimental effect on care
failure of fire alarms or other safety devices for more than 24 continuous hours

The staffing limb is the forgotten oneIt has no numeric threshold. A period where you genuinely could not staff safely is notifiable in its own right — and a provider who never notifies it, then has a staffing-related incident, has a harder conversation.

Reg 12(3)

You have changed the statement of purpose

Within 28 days

A hard deadline, and a different one from the changes below. This is the regulation people conflate with reg 15.

Reg 15

Something has changed about who runs it

As soon as reasonably practicable

someone other than the registered person carries on or manages the activity, or a registered person ceases to
a registered individual changes their name
any change in the membership of a partnership
change of the body's name or address; change of director, secretary or similar officer; change of nominated individual
appointment of a trustee in bankruptcy, receiver, manager, liquidator or provisional liquidator

It bites on proposals, not just eventsReg 15 applies where the change "takes place or is proposed to take place". That is wider than most providers assume, and it means the duty can arise before anything has happened.

Reg 14

The registered manager will be away for 28 days or more

28 days before

Planned absence: not later than 28 days before it starts, unless a shorter period is agreed
Emergency: within 5 working days of it happening
Return to duty: not later than 7 working days after the return date

Working days exclude weekends, Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays.

The provider itself

Reg 21

A partner, or an individual provider, has died

Without delay

Notified in writing by the surviving partner or the personal representative. Where an individual provider dies, the representative must also notify their intentions for the activity within 28 days.

The only self-executing permission in the schemeA personal representative may carry on the regulated activity without registration for up to 28 days — extendable by CQC by up to a year — provided someone is appointed to manage day-to-day operations full time. It is the one situation in which operating unregistered is lawful.

Reg 22

An insolvency practitioner has been appointed

Plans within 28 days

The duty falls on the appointee personally — receiver, manager, liquidator, provisional liquidator or trustee in bankruptcy. They must notify the appointment and the reasons, appoint a manager if there is no registered manager, and notify their intentions for the future of the activity within 28 days of appointment.

No express deadline on the first partThe regulation sets 28 days for the intentions, but no day-count for notifying the appointment itself. Do it immediately anyway.

The myth: "we already reported it elsewhere"

This costs providers fixed penalties every year, and it is worth being blunt about.

For adult social care, that exemption does not exist. The carve-outs in the regulations are drawn by reference to the type of body, not the type of report — they apply to health service bodies and NHS bodies reporting to NHS England. A care home, a domiciliary agency or a supported living provider is neither. So: a safeguarding referral to the local authority does not discharge the abuse notification. Reporting to the police does not discharge the police notification — it creates it. RIDDOR, the coroner, the commissioner and the ICB are all irrelevant to the duty.

There are two genuine exceptions, and they are narrow. Infection outbreaks go to the UK Health Security Agency under health protection law rather than to CQC as a notification. Medicines errors are not notifiable in themselves — only if the error caused a death, caused a notifiable injury, amounts to an abuse allegation, or was reported to the police.

A safeguarding referral and a statutory notification are two independent tests. Many events trigger both; some trigger only one. Apply both every time rather than assuming one covers the other.

Definitions that decide the answer

AbuseSexual abuse; physical or psychological ill-treatment; theft, misuse or misappropriation of money or property; neglect and acts of omission which cause harm or place at risk of harm.

Prolonged pain, prolonged psychological harmExperienced, or likely to be experienced, for a continuous period of at least 28 days.

Not temporaryAn impairment that has lasted, or is likely to last, at least 28 days.

Health care professionalA person registered as a member of a profession under section 60(2) of the Health Act 1999.

Working dayAny day other than Saturday, Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a bank holiday in England and Wales.

Two checks worth running on your own policy

Both catch out-of-date templates immediately.

One. If your notifications policy cites regulation 18(2)(c) or 18(2)(d), it is out of date. Both limbs were removed in June 2012. A policy still quoting them has not been reviewed in more than a decade, and neither, probably, has anything else in the folder.

Two. If it says a safeguarding referral discharges the CQC duty, or that you notify DoLS on application, correct both today.

How to submit

Route	What it takes
Provider portal	A limited set of notification types only. Access is restricted to nominated individuals, responsible individuals, registered managers and main partners, using their CQC-registered email address.
Email	Everything else — download the current form from the CQC website and email it. Submissions on out-of-date forms are returned, and a returned form is not a notification.
Registration and variations	Not through the portal. Separate route entirely.

Deprivation of liberty — the ground moved in June 2026. The Supreme Court overruled Cheshire West and abolished the acid test. Deprivation of liberty is now a multifactorial assessment — the type, duration, effects and manner of the restrictions, whether the person objects, the relative normality of the setting, and the purpose of the measures — with no single factor decisive, and a person who lacks capacity may nonetheless validly consent to their arrangements. The notification duty itself is textually unchanged, but the number of events that trigger it should fall substantially. CQC has said the judgment takes immediate effect, that providers should assess case by case, and that it will take a proportionate approach in the interim. Existing authorisations should be reviewed as soon as practicable.

Ofsted — children’s homes and supported accommodation

A different list, a different set of deadlines, and a different set of people to tell.

Current at September 2026. England.

Check your policy before you read any further. If your notifiable-events list includes serious complaint, serious illness or accident, or child absent without authorisation as named triggers, it is written against the Children's Homes Regulations 2001. Those were revoked more than a decade ago. The current duties sit in regulation 40 of the 2015 Regulations, which is a shorter and differently drawn list — and a policy still running on the old framework is both wrong and a visible governance finding.

Children's homes

Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, regulation 40. Everything below says "without delay"; Ofsted's own guidance asks for deaths immediately and everything else within 24 hours where possible.

Reg 40(1)

A child has died

Without delay

Seven recipients, and providers routinely miss the last four:

Ofsted
the placing authority
the Secretary of State, if not the placing authority
the local authority where the home is located, if not the placing authority
the integrated care board for the area
the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, if a secure children's home
each other relevant person

Two checksIf your policy says "clinical commissioning group", update it — that became the integrated care board. And in a secure home you must give the Ombudsman access to the premises, documents and records, and allow private interviews where people consent.

Reg 40(3)

You have made a barring referral

Without delay

The trigger is making a referral under section 35 of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 — not the outcome, not a suspension, not the allegation itself. To Ofsted, the placing authority and each other relevant person.

Two notifications, not oneThe underlying allegation is separately notifiable under reg 40(4)(c). The referral and the allegation are different duties and are often satisfied by one notification when they need two.

Reg 40(4)

The five other named triggers

Without delay

To Ofsted and each other relevant person:

(a) a child is involved in or subject to — or is suspected of being — sexual exploitation
(b) an incident requiring police involvement in relation to a child which the registered person considers serious
(c) an allegation of abuse against the home or a person working there
(d) a child protection enquiry is instigated, or concludes — two separate notifications, and the second must include the outcome
(e) any other incident relating to a child which the registered person considers to be serious

Note who is not on the listReg 40(4) goes to Ofsted and relevant persons. The placing authority is not a named recipient here, though it will usually qualify as a relevant person. The drafting differs from reg 40(1), and it is worth knowing that rather than assuming.

Reg 40(4)(e)

Missing children, serious accidents, serious illness, self-harm

Judgement

None of these is a named trigger in regulation 40. They all fall to the catch-all: any other incident the registered person considers serious. That is a judgement, and it is yours to make and to record.

The statutory guidance treats the following as falling within the notifiable category, assessed case by case:

serious concerns about a child's missing behaviour, particularly where the child is at grave risk because of age or vulnerability
a child being the victim or the perpetrator of a serious assault
serious illness or serious accident
serious self-harm
and the cumulative effect of repeated incidents, even where each on its own would not meet the bar

What to do with a "no"Where you decide an event is not notifiable, write down the decision, the reasoning and the date. The defensible position under a catch-all is a documented judgement, never silence. An inspector reading a run of missing episodes with no notifications and no reasoning will draw the obvious conclusion.

Reg 40(5)

What every notification must contain

In writing

details of the matter
who else has been notified
the actions you have taken as a result

It must be made or confirmed in writing. Ofsted's guidance is blunt about the standard: your report needs to be more than a list of times and events, and it should carry your evaluation of the incident.

The other children's homes duties people forget

Reg	Duty	To whom	When
41	Every admission and discharge	The local authority where the home is — not required if that is the placing authority	Without delay, in writing
42	Criminal conviction of the provider, manager, responsible individual, a director or a partner — in the UK or elsewhere	Ofsted	Without delay. The duty is on the convicted person individually
44	Independent person's monthly visit report	Ofsted, plus placing authorities, the provider and the responsible individual	Guidance: by the end of the following month — even if no children live there. The duty to send sits with the independent person, not the home
45	Quality of care review, at least every 6 months	Ofsted	Within 28 days of the review being completed — this deadline is statutory
46	Review of premises	Internal	At least once a calendar year
48	Absence of the person in day-to-day charge, 28 days or more	Ofsted	Planned: one month before. Emergency: within one week. Return: within 7 days
49	Changes of people, name, ownership, or premises altered, extended or acquired	Ofsted	As soon as reasonably practicable
50 / 51	Insolvency appointments / death of a registered person	Ofsted	Without delay; plans within 28 days

The regulation 49(g) trap. Notifying Ofsted that you have acquired or extended premises is a notification about a property. It is not permission to accommodate a child there. Registration attaches to the registered address — so putting a child in the house next door, however sensible it looks operationally, is running an unregistered children's home. That is a criminal offence, and it now also falls within Ofsted's new civil penalty powers, which reach individuals with operational control and not only the company.

Supported accommodation, 16 and 17

Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, regulation 27. Similar shape, materially different content.

Reg 27(1)–(2)

Death of a child, and barring referrals

Without delay

Death: Ofsted, the accommodating authority, the Secretary of State, the local authority for the area if different, and the integrated care board. No Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and no investigation-access duty. Barring referral: Ofsted, the accommodating authority, any other relevant person.

Reg 27(3)

The six named triggers

Without delay

(a) sexual exploitation or child criminal exploitation — actual or suspected
(b) an incident requiring police involvement which the registered person considers serious
(c) an allegation of abuse against the undertaking or a person working for it
(d) a child protection enquiry instigated, or concluded with the outcome
(e) any incident involving the use of a measure of restraint of a child
(f) any other incident the registered person considers serious

The differences that catch people out

Two errors in particular, and both are made by competent providers moving between the two service types.

	Children's home	Supported accommodation
Restraint	Not notifiable — recorded only	NOTIFIABLE. Every incident, no seriousness threshold, no discretion
Criminal exploitation	Not named — sexual exploitation only	Named expressly, alongside sexual exploitation
Monthly independent visits	Reg 44 — monthly, report to Ofsted	No equivalent at all
Annual premises review	Reg 46	No equivalent
Premises	Registration is address-specific. A move means re-registration	Registration is of the undertaking. Premises handled by notification — 72 hours from first occupancy, 10 working days from ceasing use
Who you contact for the child	Placing authority and the IRO	Accommodating authority and the IRO or personal adviser
Ofsted mailbox	[email protected]	[email protected]
Quality review	Reg 45 — 6 monthly, to Ofsted within 28 days	Reg 32 — 6 monthly, to Ofsted within 28 days

The two errors. First: a children's home manager moving into supported accommodation who does not notify restraint — because in their last job it was recorded, not notified. Every restraint incident is notifiable in supported accommodation, with no threshold. Second: a supported accommodation provider running monthly independent visits they do not owe, while missing the 72-hour premises notification they do. Effort in the wrong place, and a breach in the right one.

What actually happens if you miss one

Be precise about this, because the sector overstates it. Failing to notify under regulation 40 is not in itself a criminal offence — the Children's Homes Regulations create no offences, and the Care Standards Act power to make specified contraventions criminal was not exercised for them. What follows is a recorded regulatory breach, a requirement or compliance notice, a hit at inspection, and consequences for the fitness of the registered manager and responsible individual. That is quite enough.

Where criminal liability genuinely bites is elsewhere: operating without registration, and failing without reasonable excuse to comply with a condition of registration — both offences under the Care Standards Act, the second carrying an unlimited fine. And Ofsted's new civil penalty power for unregistered provision now sits alongside prosecution as the faster route, reaching individuals as well as companies. The amounts and the procedure are still to be set in regulations, so nobody can quote you a figure yet.

Reporting route

Ofsted's online serious incident form, with the service URN and the date of the incident. Urgent cases likely to attract press interest: 0300 123 1231. Regulation 44 reports go by email with the home's URN and the date the visit took place.

One operational point worth acting on today: Ofsted's enforcement policy was updated in August 2026 and it can now serve notices by email. Make sure the address it holds for you is one somebody reads daily, because deadlines run from service.

The list is not the hard part

The regulator publishes what has to be notified and how quickly. You can read the whole thing in an afternoon, and it does not change often.

What changes constantly is whether anybody in your service is actually watching for those events as they happen. A notification is not really a form. It is the last step of a chain that starts with somebody on a shift recognising that what they are looking at is one of the things that has to be reported, and telling the right person before they go home.

Break that chain anywhere and the form never gets filled in. The most common break is not ignorance. It is an assumption — that the incident form was the notification, that the safeguarding referral covered it, that the on-call manager would have done it, that head office does those.

So the question worth auditing is not whether your team knows the list. It is whether, for every event in the last three months that should have been notified, you can point at who noticed it, who sent it, and when.

Work out what sits with you

The position check plots what you are accountable for against what you can actually decide. Notifications are one of the places where those two most often come apart.

Check where you stand

The three ways they actually get missed

In roughly this order of frequency.

It happened out of hours

Weekend and night events are handled by whoever is on, recorded in the daily notes, and handed over verbally on Monday to somebody dealing with four other things. If your only route runs through a Monday morning conversation, you will lose some.

Somebody decided it did not count

Usually a reasonable person making a reasonable judgement quickly, alone, without the guidance in front of them. The judgement may even be right. The problem is that nothing records that a judgement was made at all.

It was reported to somebody else

A referral to the local authority, an incident form, a call to the commissioner. Each of those is a different duty owed to a different body. Doing one of them is not doing another.

The system that fixes it

Four things, none of which cost anything.

One named person, and one named deputy. Not a role, not a team, not "the management team". A person, written down, and somebody specific who does it when that person is on leave.

One log, and only one. Every potentially notifiable event goes in it, including the ones you decide not to notify. A log that only contains the notifications you sent cannot show you what you decided not to send, which is exactly what an inspector will ask about.

A weekly look at it. Ten minutes. Read the week's incidents against the log and confirm nothing is sitting between the two.

A rule for doubt. Decide now, in the calm, what happens when it is not obvious. The workable rule is that doubt is resolved upward and the reasoning is recorded, whichever way it goes.

A late notification with a straight explanation is a much smaller problem than a missing one discovered at inspection. If you find a gap while reading this, the useful response is to notify now and say why it is late. The alternative is that somebody else finds it and forms their own view about why it was not sent.

Check the list against the source

This guide is deliberately about the system rather than the schedule. The events that must be notified, who they go to, and the timescales that apply are published by the regulator, and that is where they should be read from.

Check your own log against the published list rather than against what the team remembers. Memory drifts, and it drifts in the direction of less work.

Ring us before it is urgent. It is a much shorter conversation.

Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation, and nothing said on it goes anywhere. If you have just realised something should have been notified and was not, that is a call worth making today.

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