We are nearing the end of our baselining programme for assessing local authorities. This programme set out to review how all local authorities across England with adult social care responsibilities are meeting their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014).
All on-site assessments of 153 local authorities are complete, and final reports are due to be published by early summer, taking into account the need to pause publication during the local government pre-election period.
We will publish a report to highlight our findings from the baselining period, using our independent voice to draw attention to key themes and the successes and challenges across adult social care.
Rating characteristics: how your feedback shaped the second version
To support our assessments of local authorities, we are establishing rating characteristics. These will describe what care and support, as well as governance and leadership look like for each quality statement across each judgement level in the assessment framework.
Late last year, we shared an initial version of the rating characteristics for local authority assessments for feedback. Over this period of engagement, we received valuable feedback from a wide range of stakeholders, including over 300 responses from local authorities, people with lived experience including unpaid carers, and many others. This feedback has directly influenced the changes we have incorporated in the second version.
Our online participation platform features:
- an explanation of the purpose of the rating characteristics and how we will use them to support our assessments
- what we heard including areas that were strong, and what we needed to strengthen
- the second version of our draft rating characteristics for local authority assessments.
If you would like to share any further feedback or comments on the second version of our draft rating characteristics, email systemsengagement@cqc.org.uk before 22 March 2026. Your feedback will inform a final version of rating characteristics that we will publish on our website.
Next steps to develop our assessment approach
Looking ahead, we have developed our proposed approach to assessments of local authorities through engaging with government, partners, local authorities, people who use services and carers, and organisations that represent them.
While the approach is still subject to government approvals, our proposed assessment approach has been designed to introduce a more flexible and relational approach.
We will continue to assess local authorities using the 9 quality statements across 4 themes. We will refine our quality statements to include an emphasis on unpaid carers and the importance of people’s experiences of care. We are using learning from baselining and working with partners, including local authorities, to refine and improve the assessment process to ensure guidance we publish is clear and easy to follow.
We will continue with many of the elements used during baselining, including a self-assessment, an information return, a site visit, a published report including quality assurance processes and factual accuracy. All of these elements will be a part our flexible approach.
Once approved by government, we will publish our final approach to assessments and associated guidance, ahead of starting to re-assess local authorities. Our first information return requests are likely to be sent approximately 4 weeks after we publish the updated approach and guidance to ensure local authorities have information on the new approach before assessments start.
We will continue to notify local authorities when their assessment is due to begin. This will be streamlined into one single notification featuring all the information needed from local authorities and the date of the upcoming site visit. We anticipate giving local authorities approximately 6 to 8 weeks’ notice ahead of a site visit.
We know that local government reorganisation (LGR) will affect some local authorities. Our role as a regulator is critical to support a continued focus on quality outcomes and experiences for people, including unpaid carers, in the local area. Our approach is risk-based and flexible, which will allow for proportionality during change. We will share more details following confirmation of government plans.
Note: Our engagement on local authority assessments is not part of our consultation on how we assess and rate providers - Better regulation, better care.