Complying with the new regulations
To register with us, providers must demonstrate they meet essential standards of quality and safety across all the services they provide.
- Quick guide on regulations and outcomes
- Guidance about compliance
- How will CQC use the guidance about compliance?
- Can providers continue to use evidence for existing standards?
Quick guide on regulations and outcomes
Read our quick guide to regulations and outcomes which lists all the regulations and outcomes that we will be registering providers against.
Guidance about compliance
By law, we are required to produce guidance about compliance with the new regulations. Our guidance translates the regulations into expected 'outcomes' that describe quality and safety from the perspective of people who use services and places them at the centre of the registration system.
The guidance applies to all health and adult social care providers. It focuses on people rather than policies, on outcomes rather than systems. It relates to important aspects of care such as:
- involvement and information
- personalised care and treatment
- safety and safeguarding
In mid March, the regulations underpinning the new registration system were formally approved by Parliament and come into force from 1 April 2010.
The regulations were updated with minor changes in the Parliamentary process, and we have published an updated edition of our Guidance about compliance documents to reflect these. The guidance documents are now final and supersede the previous editions dated December 2009.
Printed copies
These are now available and can be ordered online.
Guidance about compliance online
Access our online interactive version, which enables you to collect and print out the guidance that applies to your particular types of service:
- Guidance about compliance online (opens in new window)
Download the guidance
There are three documents that comprise our final Guidance about compliance:
A summary of the regulations, outcomes and steps in our Judgement framework.
Essential standards of quality and safety which makes clear the outcomes we expect people to experience if the provider is compliant with the new regulations. It also gives prompts that providers may wish to use to consider if they have the building blocks in place to achieve good outcomes. Where there is evidence of adverse outcomes then we will have to look at the systems and processes of due diligence in consideration of the regulatory action we need to take to protect people's safety, dignity and rights. We will be targeted and proportionate in all our activities.
The Judgement framework that our inspectors will use to judge compliance with the regulations. We are publishing this as part of the guidance in direct response to our consultation on the original guidance in which people asked for more detail on how we would make judgements about compliance. It has a strong focus on involving people in the development of local services, ensuring their voices are heard, and respecting people's dignity and rights. It includes case studies from different service types and outlines how our approach will be targeted and proportionate to levels of risk.
The framework also references our Setting the bar document - a guide that helps our assessors to make consistent decisions about the registration status of a provider and about the overall level of compliance or concern.
Read our guide for assessors on Setting the bar for NHS providers (opens in a new window)
Easy to read version
You can also download a summary of the guidance about compliance in easy to read words and pictures:
- Guidance about compliance: Easy read version (PDF, opens in new window)
Large print version
Read the guidance about compliance in large print:
Guidance about compliance consultation
Our guidance has been extensively tested during and following our 12-week consultation last year. We used the opinions, experiences and responses gathered during the consultation period to inform the final guidance about compliance.
Find out about the results of the consultation:
Response to consultation on the guidance about compliance (PDF, 137KB, opens in new window)
How will CQC use the guidance about compliance?
We will use the guidance about compliance to consider:
- whether a provider continues to be suitable and is allowed to keep their registration;
- how we judge compliance of a provider with the essential standards of quality and safety;
- whether concerns about a provider should require them to make improvements or should lead to us using our more formal powers which include restricting, suspending or in the most serious cases removing their registration.
We also want to make sure that people who use services are empowered to use the guidance and for it to be a tool for them to trigger improvement themselves.
Can providers continue to use evidence for existing standards?
There are similar themes from the Standards for Better Health and the National Minimum Standards in the new guidance about compliance. Some of the evidence that providers used to demonstrate they met the old standards can be used for the new standards.
It is important, however, that providers begin to develop new systems which show how they:
- deliver positive outcomes for people who use services;
- capture information about how people experience the services they provide.
