CQC's New Sector-Specific Assessment Frameworks: What Care Providers Need to Know

For the last few years CQC has assessed every type of health and care service against a single assessment framework. That is changing. After reviews of how the framework worked in practice and a public consultation, CQC is introducing separate assessment frameworks for each main sector.

What has happened so far

• In October 2025, CQC consulted on changes to how it assesses services, under the title "Better regulation, better care", and has since published its initial response.
• In March 2026, CQC published draft sector-specific assessment frameworks for feedback, covering adult social care, primary care and community services, mental health care, and hospitals.
• The consultation on the drafts closed on 12 June 2026. Respondents strongly supported moving away from one framework for every type of provider.

What the drafts introduce

According to CQC, the sector-specific frameworks:

• Re-introduce key lines of enquiry, structured questions inspectors use to investigate each key question. In the adult social care draft, these include safety culture, safe systems and pathways, safeguarding, safe staffing and medicines under the safe question.
• Re-introduce rating characteristics, which describe what care looks like at each rating level within each sector's framework.
• Put more focus on equity of access, experience and outcomes, and on protecting people's human rights.

The five key questions (is a service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?) remain the backbone of the drafts.

Check CQC's website for the latest position on when the new frameworks take effect. Until CQC confirms the change, the current approach applies.

What is not changing

The law underneath the frameworks is unchanged. The Fundamental Standards, regulations 9 to 20A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, still set out what every provider must do, and frameworks describe how CQC assesses them.

For the workforce, the regulations that matter most stay exactly as they are:

• Regulation 18 (Staffing): sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff, with appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal.
• Regulation 19 (Fit and proper persons employed): effective recruitment and the information listed in Schedule 3 for every person employed.
• Regulation 17 (Good governance), Regulation 13 (Safeguarding) and Regulation 20 (Duty of candour), which depend on the records your team keeps every day.

How to prepare, whatever the framework

1. Anchor your evidence to the regulations, not to one version of the framework. Evidence that you meet Regulation 18 stays relevant whether CQC calls it a quality statement or a key line of enquiry.
2. Make safe staffing visible. Safe staffing appears as a line of enquiry in the adult social care draft, so be ready to show planned, rostered and actual staffing, not just a policy. See our guide to evidencing Regulation 18.
3. Close staff file gaps now. Incomplete Schedule 3 files are avoidable. See the CQC registration and Schedule 3 checklist.
4. Read the rating characteristics for your sector when CQC publishes the final version, and assess yourself honestly against them.

What this means for your workforce evidence

Whatever the final wording, inspectors will still ask the questions care providers know well. Who was on shift? Were they trained for what they were doing? Were they checked before they started? Were they supervised? What happened after an incident? Evidence that answers those questions from your own records, rather than from a policy file, will carry across framework changes.

A 30-day preparation plan

1. Week 1: staff files. Audit a sample of staff files against Schedule 3, starting with your newest starters, and fix every gap you find.
2. Week 2: training. Produce a training matrix for every role, mark what is expired or due in the next 60 days, and book it.
3. Week 3: staffing. Compare planned, rostered and actual staffing for the last four weeks, and record what you did about any shortfall.
4. Week 4: governance. Review incidents, complaints and audits from the last quarter: what you learned, what you changed, and whether actions are closed.

Repeat the cycle every quarter, and keep the records. A provider that can show it checks itself is easier to rate well.

How ProRota helps

Available in ProRota today: rotas for every location, GPS clock-in and clock-out, training and qualification records with expiry dates, incident reports, lone-worker check calls, checklists and spot checks, and pre-employment checks in ProRota Screening.

CQC Compliance ties each check to the underlying regulation and maps it to whichever CQC framework is in force, so your evidence does not need rebuilding when the framework changes.