Our updated approach to assessing local authorities

9 Apr 2026 01:22 PM

Yesterday, following government approval, we are publishing details of our updated assessment approach and guidance for local authorities. This guidance is intended to support local authorities to understand how we will continue to assess how they are meeting their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act (2014).

Our updated approach has been developed using learning from baselining and feedback and input from partners and stakeholders to refine and improve the assessment process.

How we will assess local authorities

We will continue to assess local authorities using the 9 quality statements across 4 themes. The quality statements are now underpinned by rating characteristics which describe what care and support, and governance and leadership might look like for each quality statement across each judgement level in the assessment framework.

In response to learning and feedback we now give more emphasis and prominence to issues relating to unpaid carers in our assessment activity, judgements and reporting.

More flexible and relational approach

Our updated approach is more flexible as we can undertake different types of assessments in different circumstances. This includes comprehensive and focused assessments. We will also undertake activity using our independent voice to share insights on patterns and themes in people’s experiences, quality issues and good practice in adult social care.

We are introducing regular CQC Local Authority Assurance Meetings to help us to understand the context in which each local authority is discharging its adult social care duties and the impact on the experiences and outcomes for people, including unpaid carers.

How we are improving our processes

Following learning and feedback we have updated the information return which we will send to individual local authorities at the start of the comprehensive assessment process.  We have also improved our case tracking process and are introducing case sampling after piloting this during our baselining programme.

We continue to develop our tools and processes in partnership with partners and stakeholders. This includes our communication during and post site visits, our quality assurance and factual accuracy processes, and our reporting template. We will publish updates on these when they are complete.

We will be starting to issue the first notifications and information returns to local authorities later in Spring.