How to register a domiciliary support service with Care Inspectorate Wales

Wales has no Care Quality Commission, no "regulated activity" and no registered manager in the English sense. If you have decided to start a home care agency in Wales, the thing you are applying for is registration as a domiciliary support service provider, and the decision is made in law by the Welsh Ministers acting through Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW). Almost every assumption carried over from England is wrong in some detail that matters, and one of them will reorder your entire project plan.

This guide covers getting registered, in the order a real applicant meets it, and stops at the point your Notice of Decision lands. What happens afterwards, the inspection themes, ratings, notifications and the annual cycle, is the subject of the companion piece on staying compliant with CIW after registration. It is written against CIW's Guide to Registration as last updated 25 March 2026, and checked in September 2026. Regulator guidance moves, so verify anything load-bearing on CIW's own site before you act on it.

What you are registering, and who grants it

CIW, in Welsh Arolygiaeth Gofal Cymru, sits within the Welsh Government rather than existing as a separate corporate regulator. Registration decisions are taken by the Welsh Ministers and exercised through CIW's registration inspectors. Your workforce is regulated by an entirely different body, Social Care Wales, and that split is the source of most of the confusion applicants arrive with.

The legal spine is the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, usually called RISCA. Section 5 makes it an offence to provide a regulated service without being registered for it. Home care is the regulated service defined at Schedule 1, paragraph 8: care and support provided to a person who, by reason of vulnerability or need, cannot provide it for themselves, at the place in Wales where that person lives. "Care" covers day to day physical tasks such as washing, eating and administering medication. "Support" covers advice, counselling and tasks like shopping and cleaning provided as part of a plan.

Two sets of regulations sit underneath the Act. The Regulated Services (Registration) (Wales) Regulations 2017 prescribe what an application must contain. The Regulated Services (Service Providers and Responsible Individuals) (Wales) Regulations 2017 are the service standards you are assessed against at registration and inspected against forever after.

Two points of Welsh vocabulary. The Care Act 2014 does not apply here; the statute behind assessment, eligibility and outcomes language in Wales is the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. And if a search turns up the National Minimum Standards for Domiciliary Care Agencies in Wales, note that those belong to the older Care Standards Act regime. The current expectations live in the 2017 Regulations and the Welsh Government's statutory guidance for service providers and responsible individuals.

Do you actually need to register?

Registration bites only if you fall inside the Schedule 1 definition and outside the exemptions. CIW's Guide to Registration includes a decision tree for domiciliary support services, and it is worth walking rather than skimming. The exemptions that matter most to a new operator are these.

• Four or fewer named individuals at any one time. A service providing care and support to no more than four named people is exempt. Crossing that line triggers a full registration requirement, so a micro provider that grows organically can end up trading unlawfully without ever deciding to expand.
• Support only. If you provide support and no care, you are outside the definition. If support is delivered as part of a wider package that includes care, the exemption falls away.
• Personal assistants working solely under the direction and control of the person receiving care, or of a related third party such as an attorney or a person with parental responsibility.
• Introduction and personal assistant agencies, but only where you genuinely have no ongoing role in directing or controlling the care.
• Nursing-only services, care provided by a Local Health Board, care within a family or personal relationship for no financial gain, and employment agencies supplying carers to services that are themselves CIW registered.

The introduction agency exemption is where most business models fail. CIW lists the activities that pull you back into registration: arranging a rota so visits happen when they are needed, agreeing to organise sickness or leave cover, monitoring the worker and replacing them, seeking the client's views and then directing the worker's activity, reviewing the care plan, and continuing to charge the client for the service rather than taking an introduction fee. Almost every "self-employed carer marketplace" trips at least three of these.

Supported living and extra care housing deserve a specific mention. The statutory definition does not name them, but it is wide enough to catch them, and both CIW and GOV.UK treat such schemes as domiciliary support services. CIW's position is that the care contract must be genuinely separate from the accommodation contract; if it is not, the scheme may need to register as a care home service instead.

If you are unsure, ring CIW's registration team, currently on 0300 7900 126, or email ciw@gov.wales before you apply rather than after, and check the current contact details on CIW's site first.

If you already run a CQC-registered agency in England

A CQC registration does not extend into Wales. If you operate in Chester and start taking work in Wrexham, or in Shropshire and start taking work in Powys, you need your own CIW registration for the Welsh area. That is a fresh application, not a variation of anything you hold in England. The reverse is equally true, and readers in the other nations should start with the England and CQC registration guide, the Scotland care at home guide or the Northern Ireland RQIA guide instead.

Some things genuinely are the same across the border. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 applies in Wales as in England, employment law, right to work checks, ICO registration, health and safety and RIDDOR are UK-wide, and background checks in Wales go through the Disclosure and Barring Service, not Disclosure Scotland or AccessNI. If you are mapping obligations across more than one nation, the ten step UK startup guide sets registration in the wider sequence, and the four-nation compliance comparison lines the ongoing duties up side by side.

The sequencing trap: your manager comes first

This is the single biggest scheduling constraint in Wales, and most third-party guides miss it. CIW announced a change to its registration process on 14 October 2024, implemented in CIW Online from early 2025, requiring a named manager for the service who is suitably qualified and registered with Social Care Wales for the type of service applied for. The application captures the manager's name, date of birth and Social Care Wales registration number, with CIW's own schedule of required information adding the qualifier "where appropriate".

There is a fallback. CIW's determination framework still contemplates the case where no manager has been appointed but satisfactory arrangements are in place for one to be appointed before the service becomes operational, and that will be probed at your interview. In practice, plan on having a named, Social Care Wales registered manager at the point of submission and treat the fallback as a rescue, not a strategy.

Why this reorders everything: Social Care Wales requires a social care manager to be registered before their first day in a new job. There is no grace period of the kind a care worker gets. So the critical path runs manager recruitment, then their Social Care Wales registration, then your CIW application, not the other way round.

Registration as a social care manager runs through one of a small number of qualification routes: the Level 4 and Level 5 leadership and management qualifications for health and social care, an existing qualification at Level 3 or above from the framework combined with enrolment on those, or a relevant degree in social work, nursing or occupational therapy plus a management qualification, with any outstanding qualification to be completed within an early period of registration. Check the current routes on the Social Care Wales qualification framework, because it is updated more often than most people expect.

Regulation 67 requires the Responsible Individual to appoint a manager, and the duty is not discharged if that manager is absent for more than three months. Regulation 68 sets the fitness test for the appointment, regulation 69 stops one person managing more than one service without CIW's prior permission, and regulations 70 and 71 require the appointment to be reported to the provider and to both the workforce and service regulators. If you register two areas and want one manager across both, get that permission in writing.

Can you be owner, Responsible Individual and manager all at once? Only in narrow prescribed circumstances. An individual provider can, if they are fit to manage, are registered as a social care manager with Social Care Wales, and CIW agrees. An RI for a partnership or organisation can, only where the provider is registered in relation to no more than two areas, and again only with Social Care Wales registration and CIW's agreement. There is no automatic right to wear both hats.

Your Responsible Individual, and who can lawfully hold it

Section 21 of the 2016 Act dictates who is eligible, and the test is materially tighter than England's Nominated Individual. For an individual provider, that individual must be the RI. For a limited company CIW expects a director registered at Companies House. For an LLP, a partner. For a charity, a director, trustee or member. For a partnership, one of the partners.

If no director can do it, you may designate a "similar officer", but you must explain why, and satisfy CIW that the person has authority to hire and fire managers and staff, to set pay rates for staff working directly in the service, to make investment decisions, to oversee health and safety, and to determine assurance arrangements and set benchmarks. A middle manager will not pass. Nominating a similar officer also triggers an RI interview in its own right.

The RI designation is a condition of registration, so changing your RI later is a variation application rather than a notification. The same person can be RI for more than one service, but CIW weighs the number, size, complexity and geographical spread of those services and any involvement with regulated services elsewhere in the UK.

The duties the RI signs up to are personal and they are tested. Appointing a fit and registered manager, and reporting it. Overseeing the management of the service, including when the manager is absent. Visiting the service in person under regulation 73 and speaking to people using the service, their representatives and staff. And carrying out the quality of care review under regulation 80, which must happen as often as required and at least every six months, covering engagement, incidents, safeguarding matters, complaints and record audits, with a report to the provider.

Choosing your geographical area

Your registration is scoped to Regional Partnership Board footprints, not to a council, a postcode radius or "England and Wales". At the time of writing there are seven of them, among them Gwent, North Wales, Cardiff and Vale, West Glamorgan, Cwm Taf Morgannwg, West Wales and Powys. These areas and their boundaries are set by the Welsh Government and have been reorganised before, so confirm the current list against CIW's own guidance rather than relying on this one.

Each area you register is both a condition of registration and, for inspection purposes, a separate service. It also needs its own statement of purpose. An agency based in Wrexham that starts taking work in Denbighshire is fine, because both sit in North Wales. One that crosses into Powys is not, and needs a variation application that CIW quotes at 6 weeks. Choose the area deliberately, because it also determines which commissioning framework you will need to get onto if you want local authority or health board work, which for most new providers is where the volume is.

The evidence bundle

CIW changed its process specifically so that essential information arrives with the application rather than being chased mid-assessment, which it said was causing long delays. Assume nothing will be accepted late. The useful distinction, which CIW's guidance makes but rarely surfaces, is between what you upload, what you carry to the interview, and what you have waiting at the registration inspection.

Three details catch people out. The DBS certificate must be an Enhanced with Barred List check for the correct workforce, adults or children, and must be less than three months old at the point of submission unless the person is on the Update Service. An eight-month-old certificate that would be perfectly acceptable in an English recruitment file will not do. CIW is not the registered body: you ring 0300 7900 126 and select the DBS option, CIW confirms eligibility and refers you to its third-party provider, you apply online with emailed credentials and verify your identity at a Post Office, which charges a small administration fee. Check the current steps and any charge on CIW's DBS page before you start.

Second, the two competence references are separate from the medical and bank references and are the item most often missed entirely.

Third, the statement of purpose has to satisfy Schedule 2 of the Registration Regulations, which runs from paragraph (a) to (o), with a few paragraphs applying only to accommodation-based services. CIW publishes a template and a guide to compiling one. The Welsh-specific paragraphs are the ones outsiders skip: the arrangements to support cultural, linguistic and religious needs, and how you will meet language and communication needs including through the medium of Welsh. Note that the Welsh Language Standards under the 2011 Measure bind public bodies rather than private providers directly, but commissioners routinely pass Welsh language obligations down through contracts, and CIW will ask you about it in person.

CIW's general "before you apply" list mentions floor plans, but its detailed schedule assigns floor plans to accommodation-based services. If an inspector asks a domiciliary applicant for them, ask politely which requirement they are being requested under.

What it actually costs

The fee question is where most published guidance goes wrong. There is no fee provision anywhere in the statutory scheme: section 6 of the 2016 Act contains none, the word does not appear in the Registration Regulations 2017, and CIW publishes no fee scheme on its registration pages or in its Guide to Registration. The only explicit positive statement comes from GOV.UK's licence finder entry for domiciliary support service registration in Wales, which states under "How much it costs" that there is no charge. Wales also legislated in 2006 to remove care registration fees under the previous statutory regime. Treat any guide quoting a CIW application fee as wrong, and if the number is commercially important to you, get it confirmed in writing by CIW before you budget.

The real money is elsewhere, and it recurs. Every figure below should be checked against the regulator's own current page before you rely on it.

Social Care Wales does not refund fees where registration is refused, where the application is incomplete, or where a registrant leaves the register, so decide in your contracts of employment who pays. The per-head workforce fee has no English equivalent and it must appear in the two-year business plan CIW assesses, alongside the Welsh Government's Real Living Wage commitment for registered social care workers, which flows to providers through local authority and health board commissioning and sets a practical pay floor. Check the current rates on the Social Care Wales fees page before you model.

Applying through CIW Online, and what happens next

Regulation 5 of the Registration Regulations 2017 requires the application to be made online. There is no paper form, no form number and no downloadable application, so any guide naming one is inventing it. All CIW online services are bilingual.

1. Create and activate an account. You cannot self-serve into CIW Online. You create the account, then telephone CIW to verify your identity, then receive an Activation PIN which you enter under your user name in the portal. Build the phone call into your timeline.
2. Complete the three-part form. Part 1 covers the service provider: entity type, company or charity number, addresses, officer details, links to other companies, previous or current involvement in regulated services anywhere in the UK, and DBS details. Part 2 covers the service itself: name, geographical area, office addresses, range of needs, the average hours of domiciliary support you intend to provide each week, the manager's details, and the uploaded statement of purpose. Part 3 covers the designated Responsible Individual. If the RI is not the person completing the form, they receive an email and must log in using the exact address specified in the application to complete their own part. Only then can you submit.
3. Answer the four RI suitability questions. They ask about your arrangements to appoint a suitable manager and your understanding of the duty to report the appointment; the systems for overseeing the management of the service, including during manager absence; how and how often you will visit the service; and the systems for monitoring, reviewing and improving quality, including the quality of care review and how you engage with others. Thin answers here generate supplementary questions at interview and are a common cause of drift.
4. Completeness check, then acceptance. An application is not accepted until the key information is valid and present. Acceptance is not approval to operate. Once accepted it is allocated to a registration inspector and you can track progress in the portal.
5. Quality assessment. CIW completes its initial assessment of application quality within three weeks of allocation, according to its published timescales. If the application is judged poor quality, CIW arranges a feedback meeting and sets a timescale to resubmit improvements. That off-ramp adds weeks and is entirely avoidable.
6. Premises checklist and, often, a site visit. For a previously unregistered domiciliary support service, CIW's own matrix says a visit is required where the premises is not a commercial unit, for example a personal address. Where it is a commercial unit a visit is less likely, with the lease agreement and completed suitability checklist among the factors weighed. Plenty of first-time providers plan to start from a spare room and are surprised by an inspector arriving.
7. The RI suitability interview. CIW's guidance triggers an interview for all first-time applications. Expect supplementary questions from your questionnaire, questions about any positive DBS disclosure, and a direct question about how you as a leader will promote the Welsh language and culture in the service. That last one catches England-based applicants cold.
8. Determination. CIW asks four questions: does the application contain everything required, is the applicant a fit and proper person, is the designated RI suitable, and will the provider comply with the regulations. If you agreed to the proposed conditions and CIW intends to grant, you receive a Notice of Decision and registration takes effect that same day. If CIW proposes different conditions or refusal, you first receive a Notice of Proposal giving you at least 28 days to make representations. CIW aims to respond within 28 days of that deadline and must issue within 56 days. Where a decision follows a proposal, registration takes effect 28 days after the Notice, unless you appeal. Section 26 of the Act gives a right of appeal, heard by the First-tier Tribunal (Care Standards).

CIW's published timescale for an initial application is up to 14 weeks, and it says plainly that this can take longer if more information is required or if requested information is not returned on time. RI applications and variations are quoted at 6 weeks each. Those are CIW's figures as published at September 2026, so check the current timescales before you plan around them; the "two months" and "two to four months" claims circulating on consultancy sites are not CIW's own. Remember that the 14 weeks runs from a complete application, so add your manager's Social Care Wales registration, your DBS turnaround and your statement of purpose drafting on the front.

Where applications come unstuck

Ranked roughly by how often they bite, and how expensive they are.

• Trading before the Notice of Decision. CIW is unambiguous that applicants must not start providing a service before registration is granted. Taking a first client while your application is pending is an offence under section 5 and damages your fitness as well as your application.
• No named, suitably qualified, Social Care Wales registered manager. The most common reason a first-time Welsh application stalls, for the sequencing reason above.
• Failing the completeness check. Usually a missing or out of date DBS certificate, a check applied for against the wrong barred list, a missing medical, bank or competence reference, or missing financial documents.
• A statement of purpose that does not meet Schedule 2. Frequent omissions are the specific area, the addresses of other offices used in connection with the service, the range of needs stated as age range, number and sex, the cultural, linguistic and religious arrangements, and the Welsh language paragraph.
• An ineligible or insufficiently senior Responsible Individual, or a similar officer designated without an explanation and without evidence of the authority the test demands.
• An RI who cannot describe their statutory duties, particularly visiting the service in person and the six-monthly quality of care review.
• Fitness issues. Undisclosed convictions, association with a person who has committed offences, or previous involvement in the misconduct or mismanagement of a regulated service. CIW cross-checks Companies House, the Charity Commission, the NMC and the Care Quality Commission for any English services connected to the same people. A positive DBS disclosure is often survivable; failing to declare it is not.
• Financial viability concerns. An under-cooked two-year plan, or a cash flow that does not carry the service to break-even, and one that fails to fund workforce registration fees.
• Insurance that does not name the service, or a lease with too short a notice period.
• Registering the wrong legal entity. Where a management company subcontracts delivery, CIW registers those who direct, control and are ultimately responsible, and may require the entities to register jointly. Get advice before you novate a local authority contract.

After the Notice of Decision

Under RISCA, certificates of registration no longer exist. Your proof is the Notice of Decision plus your entry on CIW's public register of providers and their conditions of registration. Your conditions for a domiciliary support service will always include the geographical area and the designation of the Responsible Individual, and for a partnership, the names of the partners.

From day one you are carrying live obligations. Every domiciliary care worker must register with Social Care Wales within six months of starting in the role, and their induction should follow the All Wales Induction Framework. You must honour the section 8 undertaking on 30-minute visits, which is hooked into the grant of registration by section 7(1)(a)(ii) and shapes your pricing, your rota design and your contract negotiations. Notifications begin immediately: the duty sits in regulation 60 of, and Schedule 3 to, the 2017 Service Providers and Responsible Individuals Regulations, requiring notification without delay and in writing of a long list of events including abuse or allegations of abuse, deaths and serious injuries, infectious disease outbreaks, pressure ulcers, police-reported incidents, RI absence of 28 days or more, changes of director or partner, and changes to the statement of purpose. Keep that separate in your head from a safeguarding referral to the local authority, which is a different duty to a different body under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. New providers routinely do one and forget the other.

Your first inspection date is not published as a fixed interval. CIW's Code of Practice says the timing of the first inspection is determined at registration by the registration team, so ask your inspector directly at the point of grant. After that, domiciliary support services sit on a routine 18-month interval, with early (12 months) and priority (6 months) tiers, and being newly registered is itself a factor pushing towards a shorter interval. Inspection is judged against four themes: Well-being, Care and Support, Leadership and Management, and Environment. Since April 2025 those themes carry published ratings, and providers must display their ratings, including on their own website where they have one.

Then the annual cycle. Every registered provider submits an annual return through CIW Online, and a service registered part-way through the financial year still has to file, even if it was dormant. The window falls in the spring each year, but the exact dates move, so treat any specific date as something to confirm on CIW Online rather than a fixture. In the 2026 cycle CIW opened the window on 2 April and closed it at 23:59 on 26 May. There is now a further duty to publish the submitted return on your own website no later than 91 days after the end of the financial year the return relates to, which CIW expressed for the 2026 cycle as a deadline of 30 June. Failure to publish is enforceable by penalty notice rather than being a criminal offence, but between that and the ratings display duty, a public-facing website is effectively mandatory for a Welsh provider now. Adding a service, adding a second area or changing your RI are all variation applications at 6 weeks each.

On the software side, the reason a pre-registration agency bothers with a system before it has a single client is that CIW wants to see the machinery, not the intention. homecareOS ships with a UK care policy library of 40 policies that you can adapt rather than write from a blank page, tracks Social Care Wales registration numbers and renewal dates against each carer alongside background check expiry, holds the four-nation regulator labels so nothing prints "CQC" at a Welsh inspection, and builds the evidence trail the RI's six-monthly quality of care review depends on. Pricing is per carer with office staff and service users left unmetered. It is free for your first 5 carers, with no time limit and no credit card, then Pro at £10 per active carer per month, so the smallest agencies can begin at no cost, with current rates set out on the pricing page rather than quoted here. If you want a second pair of eyes on a Welsh application before you submit, independent advisory support is available separately. Either way, the next thing to read is what CIW compliance looks like after registration.