CQC and Ofsted registration for new care providers
You want to start. The application is where most people stop.
Not because the idea is wrong, and usually not because the person is wrong either. It is because nobody tells you the order — and the form asks you, on page one, for decisions you were planning to make in month three.
Free check: what are you registering for, and can you staff it? →Two minutes · no email address
Before the form
What starting actually involves
Six decisions. Every one of them is asked on the application, and every one of them is much harder to change afterwards than it is to get right now.
The entity
Who is the provider
A company, a partnership, or you personally — and the answer changes your liability, your tax, your ability to sell later and, if it goes wrong, what happens to your house. Choose it before you apply, not after.
The activity
Exactly what you are registering to do
Personal care, accommodation with nursing or personal care, a children's home, supported accommodation. Get this wrong and you are running a service you are not registered for — which is where a surprising number of providers reach us.
The manager
Who will hold the registration day to day
A registered manager who is willing, qualified and can hold their own in a fit person interview. This is the single most common reason an application stalls, and the slowest one to fix from a standing start.
The building
Where it happens, and whether you are allowed
Planning use class, fire, adaptations, and whether the layout supports the service you have described. A property that looks perfect can be the wrong use class, and nobody tells you until you have signed.
The evidence
The documents they actually read
A statement of purpose written for your service rather than downloaded, policies you could defend in an interview, and the checks on everyone who needs them. Generic paperwork reads as generic on the day.
The money
How long you can go before the first payment
Registration takes months, not weeks, and nothing comes in during that time. Most services that fail early do not fail on quality — they run out of runway between approval and the first invoice being paid.
Free · No email address
What are you registering for — and can you staff it?
Almost nobody is refused registration for picking the wrong regulator. They are refused, or they open and then fail, because the manager was not appointable, the model was not registrable as described, or the rota costs more than the placement pays. All three are visible before you apply. Six or seven questions, and the arithmetic is underneath.
- 01The service
- 02The people
- 03The numbers
- 04Your answer
Choose one
Tick everything that applies, then continue.
What to do first
Indicative only, based on what you have told us, and general information about registration in England rather than advice about your service. Current at 4 September 2026. The rota arithmetic below is the part most worth doing properly — run it with your own figures before you sign anything.
The rota arithmetic
This is the part that decides whether the business works, and it takes ninety seconds. One post covered around the clock is not one job — it is roughly five people once leave, sickness and training are paid for. Change every figure to your own.
Front-line care staff only. The registered manager, deputy, on-call, recruitment, training, independent scrutiny, insurance, rent, utilities, food and voids all sit on top — as a rule of thumb they add a third again before you have made anything. If the per-bed figure is already close to the rate you have been quoted, the model does not work, and no amount of registration support will fix that.
Choose your service type
Which of these are you setting up?
Sixteen routes, and the differences that decide them are rarely the ones people expect. Each one below says how to tell it apart from the service it is most often confused with.
Domiciliary care agency
Your carers visit people in their own homes by the hour. The cheapest regulated service to start and the hardest to staff.
Live-in care agency
One carer stays in the client’s home for days at a time. The same regulated activity as domiciliary care, and a completely different supervision problem.
Complex care agency
Ventilation, tracheostomy, PEG feeding, one-to-one packages. Turns on who is clinically accountable, and it is usually an ICB paying.
Introductory agency
You introduce carers and step back. Keep any ongoing role in the care and you must register — and most agencies have drifted across that line without deciding to.
Residential care home
You provide accommodation together with personal care. The building is part of the registration, not a detail beside it.
Nursing home
A residential home plus nursing care as a second regulated activity. Nurse recruitment, not the application, is the real constraint.
Learning disability and autism service
Assessed against Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, where the size and setting of the service carry unusual weight.
Supported living
People hold their own tenancies and you provide the care. If housing and care are not genuinely separate, it can be read as a care home.
Shared Lives and extra care
An approved carer supporting someone in their own family home, or care attached to extra care housing. Two models, registered differently.
Children’s home
Ofsted, not CQC. Care and accommodation for children. The Responsible Individual is a real role and the location assessment is read closely.
Supported accommodation, 16–17
Ofsted. Semi-independent support for older teenagers. If the young people need help with personal care, you are probably looking at a children’s home.
Independent fostering agency
Ofsted. You recruit, assess and approve foster carers, then place children with them. There is no building to register — the whole business is carer supply, the panel and the supervising social worker ratio, and that is where new agencies stall.
Residential family centre
Ofsted. Parents and children live in together while their parenting is assessed, usually under a court direction. It looks like a small children’s home and is registered as something else entirely — you are registering the assessment work, not the accommodation.
Substance misuse service
Residential detoxification. Prescribing, withdrawal management and clinical accountability decide the application.
Independent healthcare clinic
Diagnostics, treatment or procedures. Clinics get the regulated activities wrong more often than any other service here, usually by registering for too little.
Day care service
Activities, meals, transport and company need no registration at all. The day someone is routinely helped to wash or eat, that may have changed.
Not sure which one you are? It is the question we are asked most often, and it is usually settled in one conversation. Do I need to register with CQC or Ofsted? is the place to start, or just ask us.
The order to do it in
Most failed applications are not wrong, they are out of sequence. Doing these four in this order is the difference between three months and eighteen.
01
Decide what the service is
The activity, the people, the numbers, the model. Everything else on the application is downstream of this, and nothing else can be written until it is settled.
02
Line up the manager and the money
The two slowest items. Start them on day one and they run alongside everything else instead of holding it up at the end.
03
Fix the premises question
Use class, suitability, adaptations, and whether the layout supports the service you have just described. Before you commit to a lease, not after.
04
Write it, then submit it
Statement of purpose, policies and evidence written for this service — then the interview prepared properly, because that is where applications are won and lost.
We would rather tell you not to do it than take your money and watch it fail.
Some of the most useful conversations we have end with somebody deciding to wait a year, buy an existing service instead, or not do it at all. That is a good outcome, and it costs you nothing to find out.
What that has looked like
Names withheld, because most of this is nobody else's business.
Put right
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 changed the registration to match the service.
Property
A building found, designed and approved
Someone who had inherited property and no idea what could be done with it. We appraised it, brought in the architectural designers, and took it through to a service that could be registered.
Capability
The clinical team assembled before opening
A provider taking on complex needs without the multidisciplinary clinical support to hold them. We built the team around the service rather than writing a report about the gap.
Not ready to talk yet
Three other ways to get started
Plenty of people are not ready for a phone call, and that is fine. Nothing here needs one.
The store
Registration and policy packs
Editable, current, and written for the service you are actually setting up. Delivered immediately, with no consultancy attached.
Browse the storeResources
How registration actually works
What the regulators ask for, in what order, and what the interview is really testing. Written for people who have to do the thing.
Read the guidesThe other route
Buy one that is already registered
Sometimes buying an existing service is faster, cheaper and far less risky than starting from nothing. It is worth knowing before you commit.
See how buying worksTell us what you are trying to set up. We will tell you what it takes.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. Bring the idea, the building, the budget or none of them — wherever you are up to is where we start.
Text or WhatsApp
07426 919823If it is easier to write it down than say it out loud, send a message.