On March 25th, the CQC gave an official response to the 1,700 responses that providers had given in their 'Better Regulation, Better Care' consultation, which closed in December 2025. They are proposing to return to some measures which had previously been used by the CQC but had been abandoned in favour of the Single Assessment Framework. Share your views through the CQC's online survey by 12 June.

The CQC have said that they have already started to work to implement the proposals in their consultation, as follows:

1. Re-introducing sector-specific assessment frameworks

"Respondents very strongly supported (94%) our intention to move away from a single framework covering all types of providers. Instead, we are planning to re-introduce separate assessment frameworks for each main health and care sector that we regulate".

They have published 4 draft assessment frameworks for consultation covering the following sectors, which will be tested and piloted in the coming months, to find out if some - like the primary acre and community services framework - should be split into two separate frameworks:

• adult social care
• mental health care
• primary care and community services
• secondary and specialist care (hospitals)

2. Re-introducing rating characteristics

"We will re-introduce rating characteristics within each sector-specific assessment framework. The draft frameworks include our proposed rating characteristics, which aim to provide greater clarity and transparency for providers, the public and CQC colleagues about what care looks like under each of our 4 rating levels of: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate."

3. Changing quality statements to supporting questions

"Rather than using quality statements, our assessment frameworks will include a set of new supporting key lines of enquiry, which will clearly indicate the areas we look at during assessments and inspections."

4. Removing scoring from our assessment methodology

"We will remove scoring from our assessment approach. Future rating judgements will be made holistically using the professional judgement of our inspection teams, informed by evidence and with reference to the rating characteristics and supporting guidance."

5. Making rating judgements directly at key question level

"We will no longer make formal judgements below the level of our 5 key questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led). We will award ratings directly at key question level based on a review of evidence across the whole question, using structured professional judgement."

Services that are currently exempt from regulation:

"Some types of services registered with us are exempt from CQC’s legal duty to assess provider performance and give a rating, for example primary dental care providers and some independent healthcare services, and some services we inspect in partnership with other bodies. As part of the engagement and consultation on the content of our draft sector assessment frameworks, we will also work with those sectors that we do not rate, as we develop the detail on how we will assess these services for regulatory compliance and which assessment framework we will use to do this for each type of service."

Next steps

• The CQC will consult on the above 4 draft sector-specific frameworks, and refine them, developing new guidance as to how they will be used.
• They will improve their operational systems, inspector support, and reduce healthcare inequalities further
• There is a focus on developing assessment approaches for non-rate services
• They will focus on neighbourhood working and their role in that
• A full response to the consultation will be published during this year (2026)

You can read the full update here, and a more detailed version of the update here. 

Click here to give your feedback to the CQC by 12th June.