If you've been following CQC news over the past few months, you'll know a new framework is on the way. New Key Lines of Enquiry, draft Rating Characteristics, a consultation still open, and a complete replacement of the current Single Assessment Framework on the horizon. It can feel difficult to keep track of what's changed, what's coming next, and what you need to do right now.
This post cuts through the noise and gives you a clear picture of where things stand, what the changes mean in practice, and the one big debate that nobody is talking about loudly enough.
It helps to understand how we got here, because the CQC framework changes have been rolling out in stages:
Not all 24 Key Lines of Enquiry are brand new. In fact, 10 of them directly match an original Quality Statement. There are 14 ‘new’ Key Lines of Enquiry and, just last week, 6 of them had been subtly renamed since the original list was shared in December. It’s also worth noting that Person-centred care has moved from Responsive to Caring.
Unlike the Quality Statements, which were written as declarations of intent, the new Key Lines of Enquiry are framed as structured questions - describing what CQC will actively look for during an assessment, rather than what a provider should be doing.
Grey – Matches an original Quality Statement Yellow – Brand New Red Box – recently amended from the original 3rd December list
The Single Assessment Framework (SAF) introduced at the end of December 2023, and spreading nationally in early 2024, was ambitious but, by most accounts, poorly executed.
CQC has listened. The SAF is being replaced with four sector-specific assessment frameworks covering: adult social care, mental health care, primary care and community services, and hospitals. For residential services and domiciliary care providers, this means adult social care will once again have its own dedicated framework, built around the realities of your sector rather than a one-size-fits-all model.
The five key questions (Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-Led) remain. The 34 Quality Statements will be gone, replaced by the new Key Lines of Enquiry. And the Rating Characteristics are returning, giving providers clearer descriptors of what each rating level looks like in practice.
A key point to highlight about the rating characteristics is they are baked into the framework - they are not guidance - they are the measuring stick used to assess your evidence.
Here is where things get genuinely important for managers and leaders, and where the sector's voice in the consultation matters most.
CQC is removing scoring from the assessment methodology. Few would argue with scrapping the messy percentage-based scoring at the final Key Question level. But scoring individual Quality Statements was valuable, and its loss risks being overlooked in the wider celebration of simplification. Here is why it mattered:
If individual Quality Statement scoring is going, the minimum providers should be pushing for in this consultation is a rating for each Key Line of Enquiry, not just at Key Question level. The Rating Characteristics exist precisely to make this possible. Giving services a rating (Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, Inadequate) for each KLOE would preserve the transparency and granularity that made the old system valuable, without the complexity of the numerical scoring model.
CQC may choose not to make KLOE-level ratings public. That is a reasonable position. But services should at minimum receive their own KLOE ratings in the assessment report. Professional judgement can still govern the final Key Question and overall service rating. Transparency at the KLOE level does not have to conflict with that.
Most residential services and domiciliary care services will continue to be assessed under the current SAF until the new framework goes live, which is unlikely before the end of 2026. If you are overdue an inspection and think it’s likely to happen in the next 6 months or so then ensure you are ready under the current Single Assessment Framework.
The previous consultation on Better Regulation, Better Care attracted nearly 1,700 responses. CQC has been explicit that it listened and adjusted as a result. The current consultation on the draft sector-specific frameworks runs until 12 June 2026, and your voice as a residential services or domiciliary care provider will carry real weight.
You can submit your feedback at: cqc.govocal.com
The move to sector-specific frameworks is the right direction. A single framework was always an uneasy fit for the complexity and diversity of all the service types CQC assess - the Single Framework encompassed everything; adult social care, hospitals, dentists and more!. Residential services managers and domiciliary care providers operate in a fundamentally different environment to hospitals or GP practices, and a framework built around that reality should produce more meaningful, more consistent assessments.
But the framework will only be as good as the details. Rating Characteristics need to be specific enough to be useful. KLOE-level ratings need to reach providers. Professional judgement needs clear boundaries, so it does not become a return to the opaque assessment culture that eroded trust in CQC's ratings in the first place.
The sector has until 12 June to shape those details.