CQC registration for a home care agency in England

This is the deep dive on step 5 of starting a home care agency in the UK: getting registered with the Care Quality Commission. It covers the process only, from working out whether you are in scope to the morning your certificate lands. What happens afterwards, the fundamental standards, assessments and ratings, is a different subject and it has its own guide, CQC compliance for home care.

Everything below was checked against CQC's own guidance pages and the underlying legislation on 1 September 2026. CQC revises these pages often, and its published fee tables are older than you would expect, so treat every figure here as a starting point and confirm it on cqc.org.uk before you rely on it. Where CQC contradicts itself, and it does in two places that matter, this guide says so rather than picking the convenient answer.

CQC registration requirements at a glance

Every requirement below is set out in full further down, with the regulation it comes from. Nothing here is optional: CQC checks all of it before it will register you.

• The right regulated activity. Home care registers for Personal care, defined in Regulation 2 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Carrying it on unregistered is a criminal offence under section 10 of the Act.
• The right legal entity. Registration belongs to the body carrying on the activity, so the wrong applicant means withdrawing and starting again.
• A registered manager. A separate personal registration under Chapter 2 of the Act, with fitness tested against Regulation 7.
• Fit and proper people. A nominated individual for organisations (Regulation 4), fitness evidenced for directors (Regulation 5), and an enhanced DBS obtained through CQC's own countersignature.
• A location in England where records can be kept securely, with landlord or lender permission where that applies.
• A statement of purpose meeting Regulation 12 and Schedule 3 of the CQC (Registration) Regulations 2009.
• A complete document pack, every declaration signed and dated, and manager work history from age 16 with gaps over four weeks explained. Giving false or misleading information is a criminal offence.
• The annual fee for your community social care grouping, which you should confirm on cqc.org.uk because CQC's published tables run behind.

Do you need to register, and what exactly for

CQC regulates health and adult social care in England. If you will deliver personal care to people in their own homes anywhere in England, CQC is your regulator and nobody else is. The other three nations run entirely separate systems, compared in the four nation compliance guide.

What you register for is a regulated activity called Personal care. Regulation 2 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 defines personal care as physical assistance with eating or drinking, toileting including menstruation, washing or bathing, dressing, oral care, or care of skin, hair and nails, with an exception for nail care given by an HCPC registered chiropodist or podiatrist. It also covers prompting together with supervision of those tasks where the person cannot decide to do them without it.

That definition is the whole test. If you only provide shopping, cleaning, companionship or housing support, you are outside it. If you only prompt medicines and touch none of the tasks above, you are outside it. If you help someone wash or dress, you are in, whatever you call the business.

Schedule 1, paragraph 1(3) sets out the exceptions: an employment business supplying carers to a registered provider; a genuine introductory agency that introduces a carer and then has no ongoing role directing or controlling the care; a carer employed directly by the individual or a related third party such as an attorney or a trust set up for their needs; and prison managers. Introductory agencies that in practice roster and supervise carers are carrying on a regulated activity, and doing that unregistered is a criminal offence under section 10 of the Act.

Registration is by the legal entity that carries on the activity, so the limited company registers, not the director. On the form you tick the service type Domiciliary care services including those provided for children (DCC), which sits in CQC's community social care grouping and drives your annual fee. Get the entity right first time: the wrong applicant means withdrawing and starting again.

The application route most guides get wrong

Two claims sit at the top of almost every competing page and both are wrong.

There is no online application. As at September 2026, a new homecare provider application cannot be made through the CQC provider portal. CQC's homecare How to apply page and its Register as a provider page both say apply by form and email. You download protected Word forms, fill them in, and email the lot to hsca_applications@cqc.org.uk, though you should check the current address on CQC's how to apply page before you send. The stated limit is 25MB per email, and the current limit is on CQC's how to apply page; compress to a ZIP if you exceed it, and if it is still too big, split across numbered emails with the provider name, application type and count in the subject line. CQC does reference an online submission route elsewhere in its guidance, so check the forms page before you assume, but the homecare instruction today is email.

The forms are protected documents, which means spellcheck and bullets do not work inside them. Draft your answers somewhere else and paste them in. Typed names are accepted as signatures.

There is no application fee. CQC's fee scheme provides for fees for the grant or subsistence of registration, and the how to apply guidance contains no payment step at all. Fee liability starts when you are registered, not when you apply. Third party pages quoting a four figure CQC application fee are describing something that does not exist in the published scheme.

The provider portal becomes relevant only after you are registered, and then only for certain notification types.

The people who must be in place before you apply

CQC assesses people, not just paperwork, and it assesses them before you trade. The registered manager's application is a separate personal registration under Chapter 2 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008: the requirement arises as a registered manager condition under section 13, the application is made under section 14, and CQC grants or refuses it under section 15. Fitness is tested against Regulation 7.

On qualifications, CQC names the benchmark rather than mandating it: a Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Adult Care, or an equivalent, strengthens a homecare application. Treat it as the practical floor. CQC also expects a homecare manager to have handled complaints, mental capacity assessments, safeguarding concerns and medication errors, and says recent experience in a regulated care or homecare service will strengthen the application. Managers give full work history from age 16 with every gap over four weeks explained, and giving false or misleading information in a registration application is a criminal offence.

The hard rule, in CQC's own words, is that it will not register services where key people plan to get the training and experience they need after they are registered. A candidate studying for the Level 5 while you wait will fail.

One terminology trap. In England the corporate accountable person is the nominated individual under Regulation 6, notified to CQC as a director, manager or secretary responsible for supervising the management of the regulated activity. In Wales the Responsible Individual is a formal statutory office under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, designated with Care Inspectorate Wales and required to supply a medical reference. They are not the same thing, and any guide that calls the England role a Responsible Individual has imported a Welsh concept. Can one person be both nominated individual and registered manager? CQC says that in very small organisations it may be necessary, but that it should be avoided where possible, because it sometimes needs to speak to someone more senior when there are concerns.

DBS checks set your timetable, so start them first

England and Wales use the Disclosure and Barring Service. Scotland uses the PVG scheme and Northern Ireland uses AccessNI, and neither has any role in a CQC application.

Everyone applying as an individual provider, a registered partner or a registered manager needs an enhanced DBS check with the appropriate barred list before the application goes in, and the nominated individual needs one too. Unless the person is registered with the GDC, GMC, GPhC, HCPC, NMC or Social Work England, the check must be countersigned by CQC and applied for through the DBS umbrella service CQC directs you to rather than an ordinary DBS route. CQC does not publish the price of that check, and the application address has changed before, so take the current route from CQC's DBS checks page rather than a link you found elsewhere. Countersigning authorises the extra identity checking CQC requires, and identity can be verified at a participating Post Office.

CQC will not accept a DBS Update Service certificate, and will not accept third party check services unless the resulting certificate meets every one of its criteria. This catches out applicants who already hold a perfectly good DBS.

Pick the right barred list: adults' only for an over 18s service, children's only for under 18s, both if you will take people of all ages. The wrong one means a fresh check and a fresh wait.

The certificate must be no more than 12 months old, and CQC rejects applications with checks over 12 months old without further review. If your application sits in the queue while the certificate ages, that is a live risk.

CQC gives two different timescales on its own website. Its DBS checks page says it can take up to 60 working days to receive a certificate. Its homecare Before you apply page says checks usually take around 14 days but can take longer. The register as a provider page says up to 60 days, but that sentence is scoped to your main point of contact. Plan on the longest figure and apply the day you decide to proceed.

Your office, your location and your statement of purpose

Even though the care happens in people's homes, you register a location, and that is your office. The address must be in England. CQC cannot accept an address in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or overseas, even if that is where the business is run from. A PO box is not permitted at all, because CQC can only inspect regulated premises. Some guides say a PO box is acceptable inside a fuller address; it is not.

This address is used for service of documents under sections 93 and 94 of the Act unless you agree to service by email, and it is published on your CQC profile and on your certificate. If you register your home, your home address becomes public. You will also need evidence that you may lawfully occupy the premises, meaning a lease, licence or proof of ownership, plus landlord or mortgage lender permission where that is needed. Premises where records cannot be kept safe and secure can lead to refusal.

The statement of purpose is a legal document, required by Regulation 12 and Schedule 3 of the CQC (Registration) Regulations 2009. It must set out your legal status, addresses including the address for serving notices, your aims and objectives, and for each location the service types, the people you will support, the regulated activities and the registered manager, with each manager's contact details, the locations they cover and the percentage of time at each.

Two mechanical checks catch a lot of applicants. The address for service in the statement of purpose must match the address on the form exactly. And the service types you tick must match how the statement of purpose describes the service. After registration you must keep it under review and notify CQC of any revision within 28 days.

The document pack, and the two things homecare applicants get wrong

Send everything in one go. The provider forms, every registered manager application and all supporting documents must arrive together, because CQC cannot process a part built application.

CQC sets rules on the documents themselves. Each must carry your business name, the person responsible for it, its creation date and its review date. Each must be complete, internally consistent with your other policies, free of any service user or staff personal data, with working links and current legislative references, relevant to the service types and service user bands you selected, and unique to your business. CQC returns applications that contain information identifying a real person.

One tailoring point specific to homecare. Your consent policy should engage the Mental Capacity Act 2005 properly, but Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards apply only in hospitals and care homes. A domiciliary agency can never use DoLS. Where care in someone's own home or in supported living would amount to a deprivation of liberty, the route is an application to the Court of Protection, normally by the commissioning local authority. Getting that right in your policy signals that you wrote it. Likewise, an England safeguarding policy should name section 42 of the Care Act 2014 and your local Safeguarding Adults Board, and a medicines policy that references NICE guideline NG67 on managing medicines for adults receiving social care in the community reads as considered rather than bought.

Stage one: the completeness gate that ends most applications

This is the part almost nothing else on the web explains, and it is now the largest single cause of failure. CQC announced the change for homecare from 1 July 2025 as a pilot; its current homecare guidance describes it as settled process.

Stage one has two steps and no assessment of quality at all.

1. Application review. CQC checks the forms and the statement of purpose are complete and that all the required supporting documents were actually sent.
2. Supporting documents review. CQC checks those documents are complete, accurate, relevant to the service you have applied for, and in line with its supporting documents requirements.

Fail either step and the application is rejected with an explanatory email. You can fix it and send it back, but CQC is explicit that a resubmission counts as a new application and does not keep its place in the queue. Since CQC also states that it assesses applications in the order it receives them, a stage one rejection does not cost you a fortnight. It costs you the whole wait, twice.

The practical consequence is that a first time applicant should treat stage one as a mechanical audit before pressing send. Every question answered in full. Every declaration signed and dated. Every additional section form included. Manager work history from 16 with gaps over four weeks explained. Documents labelled, dated, owned and consistent. Nothing in the pack that could identify a person.

Only apply when you are genuinely ready to trade. CQC says it cannot hold applications that are not ready, and that premises, systems and staff must be in place.

Stage two: interviews, the site visit and what gets probed

Survive stage one and CQC decides whether your application shows you can deliver care that meets the regulations. It names three assessment activities: a Fit Person Interview, a Nominated Individual Discussion and a Site Visit Assessment. Interviews may be by telephone, online or face to face, and CQC says that for most new registrations it will need to visit the premises. It publishes no duration or format specification, so ignore anyone who tells you it is a 45 minute video call.

The registered manager is interviewed in their own right, because their registration is separate. Where one person is both nominated individual and manager, expect to be pressed on how they discharge an oversight role and a management role at once.

CQC publishes two worked examples, one refused application and one that was registered, and they are the most useful thing on the topic. The refusal turned on themes any founder can guard against: policies bought online that the applicant could not explain or relate to her own agency, a proposed manager without experience of managing, recruiting or supervising staff, no firm plan for staff training, and no convincing account of how she would assure herself the service was safe. The successful applicant could say where his start up money came from and evidence it in a business account, and had researched the local market carefully including talking to the council and other commissioners.

So expect questions on your own documents, your finances and break even, the real cost of running domiciliary care, local demand, mental capacity in practice, safeguarding, complaints and medication errors.

One procedural trap. If you cannot agree a date for any assessment activity within 28 days of being contacted, or CQC cannot reach you, your application may be returned or CQC may propose to refuse it. Watch the inbox you gave them.

What registration costs

Nothing to apply. Fee liability begins on registration.

A domiciliary agency sits in CQC's community social care category, and the annual fee is calculated per location on service user numbers. The figures CQC currently publishes are £239 plus the number of service users multiplied by 54.305, with a ceiling of £92,558 per location once you reach 1,700 service users. Those match the published fee scheme to the penny.

Two honest caveats. CQC's fee table is headed "Regulatory fee 2024/25" and that page was last updated in June 2024, while CQC's fees page states that the 2019/20 scheme remains valid until further notice. There is no published scheme labelled 2026/27. Treat the numbers as what CQC currently publishes rather than as this year's rate, and check the fees payable page yourself. The multiplier is also derived annually from CQC's cost of regulating the sector, so it moves.

Fees are invoiced once a year on your anniversary date, covering every location registered on that date, and are not adjusted mid year. CQC establishes your service user count by emailing the registered manager and nominated individual the month before invoicing, and if you do not reply it falls back on inspection reports and Capacity Tracker data. Answer that email. Non payment is a ground on which CQC may cancel registration, and a dormant provider still pays.

Budget separately for things CQC does not charge for and does not list: the countersigned DBS checks, whose price CQC does not publish anywhere on its site, your ICO data protection fee, which is a legal duty for any care provider handling health data, and employers' liability insurance, which the law requires from the first day you employ anyone even though CQC accepts a quote at application.

How long it takes, and what CQC does not promise

CQC publishes no service standard for registration and makes no commitment to applicants. Its homecare guidance says the assessment "can take a few months". Its general assessment page says the process can take several months. The form guidance says most applications take a few months, sometimes more.

The only official number in the public domain is a management target. CQC's 2024/25 annual report says it aimed to cut the proportion of applications still in the system after 10 weeks to under 22% by March 2025, and reached 28%, against 54% a year earlier and a peak of 53% in June 2024. That is a backlog measure, not a promise, but it tells you 10 weeks is the internal reference point.

For planning, work backwards from the DBS. Up to 60 working days for the checks, document preparation and recruitment running alongside, then an assessment measured in months, plus whatever your premises and insurance need. Six to nine months from decision to first client is a sensible assumption for a new agency. That is an inference from CQC's own components, not a CQC figure, and a stage one rejection resets it.

Do not compress the timetable by applying early. An application submitted before the premises, systems, policies and people are genuinely in place cannot be assessed and will not be held.

The decision, and the first weeks after your certificate

There are two outcomes. A Notice of Decision grants the application, possibly subject to the conditions you agreed on the form, and only from that point are you lawfully able to provide the care in your registration. A Notice of Proposal means CQC proposes to refuse, or to grant with conditions you did not agree, and sets out its reasons. You have 28 calendar days to make representations, and if CQC then adopts its proposal you can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. You can also withdraw an application instead of receiving a refusal, though a withdrawal is still something you declare in the registration history section of any future application.

Your certificate names your provider ID, your location, the regulated activity Personal care, your registered manager and nominated individual, and your conditions. Failing without reasonable excuse to comply with a condition is a criminal offence under section 33 of the Act. Adding an activity, adding or moving a location, or varying a condition all need a further application, not a notification.

Notification duties bite immediately, under the CQC (Registration) Regulations 2009. Allegations of abuse, deaths, serious injuries, police involvement, unauthorised absence, events that stop the service running safely, deprivation of liberty application outcomes, the absence of a registered person for 28 days or more and their return, plus changes to your registered details including directors, nominated individuals, your statement of purpose, insolvency and the death of a registered provider. Some of these can now go through the provider portal, which you can finally use. The rest go by email. Ongoing obligations from here are the subject of the CQC compliance guide.

You will start unrated, which matters commercially, because many councils will not commission from a provider without a rating and framework or dynamic purchasing system applications take their own time. Set up on Capacity Tracker, register with the ICO, and if you intend to sponsor carers remember the sequence runs CQC first, sponsor licence second, and that since 22 July 2025 care worker and senior care worker sponsorship is an in country route only, so check current Home Office rules before building a workforce plan around it.

A stage one rejection turns almost entirely on whether the pack is complete, current and consistent, and that is far easier to hold together in one system than across a folder of Word files that quietly drift out of step. homecareOS ships a guided registration checklist and a library of 40 UK care policies you can edit into your own voice, alongside the care planning, rota, eMAR and audit trail an inspector will ask you to walk through at stage two. It is priced per carer. Office staff and service users are not counted, and 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 start at no cost; the current rates are on the pricing page. If you would value a second reading of the application from someone who has been through a few, the advisory service exists for exactly that. And if England turns out to be the wrong nation for you, the sibling guides pick up the thread for Care Inspectorate Wales, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland and RQIA in Northern Ireland.