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CQC Policies and Procedures
CQC policies and procedures are designed to help social care staff implement the best and safest working practice. They require that the care environment is safe, and the staff are properly trained to carry out their duties to their clients. Above all, they ensure that service users receive high-quality, person-centred care and support.
Social care providers are required by the CQC to have effective policies and procedures. The CQC monitors all social care providers under the CQC’s new inspection framework, and has the power to prosecute care providers if they fail to implement the necessary policies and procedures.
We understand that managing policies and procedures in social care can be overwhelming especially when regulations change or when compliance gaps put your service at risk.
In this article, we’ll look at how to simplify CQC compliance, the key challenges care providers face when managing policies and procedures, and how the right digital tools can help you stay audit-ready, keep your team aligned, and deliver safer, higher-quality care.
There is an important distinction between CQC policies and CQC procedures:
- CQC policies set out guiding principles that care providers should follow, based on fundamental standards of care. For example, care providers must treat their clients with dignity and respect.
- CQC procedures set out the step-by-step actions that care workers need to take to perform specific tasks. For example, what a care worker needs to do when administering medication to clients.
Due to the complexity of services offered in the care sector, the policies and procedures required by the CQC are extensive. The CQC’s aim is to ensure that both workers and clients in social care settings are protected from risk of injury or illness.
The CQC’s required policies and procedures ask the following questions of a care service:
- Is it safe? Clients should be protected from abuse and harm.
- Is it effective? Clients should be empowered to attain a good quality of life.
- Is it caring? Workers should treat clients with compassion and dignity.
- Is it responsive? Services must meet the needs of clients.
- Is it well-led? Leaders should promote innovation and an open culture.
In this article we will look at what CQC policies and procedures are, why they are important, and how care providers can create and maintain the correct policies and procedures for their service.
Jump to section:
- CQC policies and procedures – are they required?
- CQC registration policies and procedures
- CQC compliance policies and procedures
- CQC policies and procedures in care homes
- CQC policies and procedures for domiciliary care
- Free domiciliary care policies and procedures
- CQC Policies and procedures software solutions
CQC policies and procedures – are they required?
All care providers must have CQC policies and procedures in place to become CQC registered. CQC compliant policies and procedures should be the foundation of every care service. Providers are required to submit their core policies and procedures to the CQC as part of the registration process.
If you offer care services in any part of the United Kingdom, you need to have rigorous policies and procedures to demonstrate that you comply with the requirements of the relevant legislation:
- Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014: These regulations set out the services and activities for which providers are required to register. They also detail the standards that providers are expected to observe for each service and activity.
- Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009: These regulations set out the standards that providers need to meet to become registered.
Your policies and procedures need to be regularly updated to reflect current legislative, regulatory, or best practice changes. This requires a significant investment of cost, expertise and time should you opt to do it yourself. A more convenient alternative might be to opt for a digital policies and procedures solution.
Social care services vary in terms of who they support and the type of support they offer. Because of this, the policies and procedures vary between different settings and organisations. Nevertheless, there is a core set of CQC policies and procedures that will apply across all social care settings:
- Safeguarding and protection
- Risk management
- Equality, diversity, and human rights
- Medicines management
- Record keeping
- Confidentiality
- Data protection
- First aid
- Concerns/whistleblowing and complaints
- Administration of medicines
- Health and safety
- Quality assurance
- Good governance
CQC registration policies and procedures
CQC registration policies and procedures fall in to three broad categories: quality management, good governance, and safeguarding:
- Quality management covers assessing and monitoring the quality of your care service.
- Good governance covers the structure and organisation of your care service.
- Safeguarding covers protecting people from harm, abuse and neglect.
Quality management:
- Administration medication other than oral and topical
- Care planning & personalised assessment
- Complaints
- Corporate risk management
- Infection prevention & control
- Management of medicines
- Medication – homely remedies
- Mental Capacity Act 2005 & Deprivation of Liberty
- Quality assurance
- Record keeping
- Safe handling & administration of medicines
- Service user risk management
- Topical medication application guidance
Good governance:
- Business continuity
- Health & safety
- Health & safety policy statement
- Staff induction
- Staff recruitment
- Staff supervision and spot checks
- Training and development
Safeguarding:
- Safeguarding adults
- Safeguarding children in an adult setting
- Whistleblowing
When making a registration application to the CQC, the relevant policy and procedure documents must be uploaded to their website. The documents must be in pdf, doc or docx format and have a file size not exceeding 1,000KB (1MB).
CQC compliance policies and procedures
CQC compliance policies and procedures are an integral part of health and social care regulation. They ensure that care providers have processes to assess, monitor and mitigate risks to the health, safety and welfare of their clients. Providers are expected to continually evaluate and improve their services.
The CQC’s required policies and procedures are designed to ensure care providers comply with the following fundamental standards of care:
- Person-centred care: Care must be tailored to the client’s needs and preferences.
- Dignity and respect: Clients must be treated with dignity and respect while receiving care.
- Consent: Clients (or their legal representatives) must provide their consent to care.
- Safety: Clients must not be given care that might put them at risk of harm.
- Safeguarding from abuse: Clients must not suffer abuse, neglect or degrading treatment.
- Food and drink: Clients must have enough to eat and drink to keep them healthy.
- Premises and equipment: Premises must be clean, and equipment must be used properly.
- Complaints: Providers must have a system for responding to complaints and taking appropriate action.
- Good governance: Providers must have effective systems to monitor the quality and safety of care.
- Staffing: Providers must ensure staff have the necessarily qualifications and experience. Their staff must be given access to regular training and supervision.
- Fit and proper staff: Providers must have rigorous recruitment procedures to carry out checks on applicants’ criminal records and work history.
- Duy of candour: Providers must be open and transparent to clients about their treatment. Should a mistake occur, they need to address it honestly.
- Display of ratings: Providers must display their CQC rating on their website and make their latest CQC report on their service freely available.
The CQC has powers to prosecute providers that fail to comply with the CQC’s fundamental standards. The CQC will use their powers to:
- Protect users of regulated care services from harm and ensure the care they receive is of the required standard.
- Hold registered providers and managers to account for shortcomings in their services.
Get a personal tour of our Policies and Procedures Software
CQC policies and procedures in care homes
The CQC policies and procedures required for care homes depend on whether the organisation is a new provider, buying or transferring a service, or a new legal entity. Relevant documents to evidence each policy and procedure must be included applications to the CQC.
When making applications the CQC require each policy or procedure document to be saved as a separate file. Each file should be appropriately named to identify it. For example, “Complaints policy and procedure.”
Policies and procedures for new providers:
- Complaints policy and procedure
- Emergency plan
- Financial viability statement (unless you’re a corporate provider)
- Governance policy
- Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) registration certificate
- List of risk assessments
- Medicines management policy and procedures
- Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) policies
- Organisational structure
- Planning permission (if applicable)
- Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
- Quality assurance policy
- Recruitment policy
- Safeguarding policy and procedures
- Safety and security of premises policy
- Sample care plan
- Staffing structure
- Staff training matrix or plan
- Statement of purpose
Policies and procedures for buying or transferring a service from another provider:
- Financial viability statement (unless you’re a corporate provider)
- Complaints policy and procedure
- Governance policy
- Organisational structure
- Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
- Safeguarding policy and procedures
- Staffing structure
- Statement of purpose
Policies and procedures for registering a new legal entity:
- Financial viability statement (unless you’re a corporate provider)
- Governance policy
- Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
- Safeguarding policy and procedures document
- Staffing structure
- Statement of purpose
CQC policies and procedures for domiciliary care
The CQC policies and procedures required for domiciliary care depend on whether the organisation is a new provider, buying or transferring a service, or a new legal entity. Applications to the CQC should include relevant documents to evidence each policy and procedure.
When making applications to the CQC remember to save each policy or procedure document as a separate file. Name each file to identify it. For example, “Governance policy.”
Policies and procedures for new providers:
- Business plan
- Governance policy
- Infection control policy
- Medicines policy
- Safeguarding policy
- Statement of purpose
Policies and procedures for buying or transferring a service from another provider:
- Business plan
- Financial viability statement
- Lone working policy
- Medications policy
- Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
- Quality assurance policy
- Safeguarding policy and procedures document
- Staffing structure
- Statement of purpose
Policies and procedures for registering a new legal entity:
- Financial viability statement (unless you’re a corporate provider)
- Governance policy
- Public and employer liability insurance quote or certificate
- Safeguarding policy and procedures document
- Staffing structure
- Statement of purpose
Free domiciliary care policies and procedures
Unfortunately, there are no free CQC domiciliary care policies and procedures for care providers to use.
As a care provider, you have four choices to create and maintain your policies and procedures:
- Do it yourself
- Hire a consultant
- Use a template service
- Use a digital solution.
Free options for care policies and procedures
Of these four choices, doing it yourself is the only one that is free, at least in terms of cost. Another advantage of authoring your own policies and procedures is that you can tailor them to the individual characteristics of your care service. In particular, you can avoid incorporating aspects of policy and procedures that don’t apply to your service.
The main drawback of doing it yourself is the significant time required to research, draft and check the requisite documentation yourself. This takes away your time from managing your care service, marketing your business or negotiating new contracts. Then you need to set aside time to update the policies and procedures to reflect changes in regulations or how you run your service.
Authoring effective care policies and procedures requires technical knowledge of not only how care should be delivered, but the regulations and legislation governing social care in your region in the UK. Then you need to understand how these regulations and legislation applies to your specific service type and how to translate them into actionable policies and procedures that are a good fit for your service.
So even though drawing up care policies and procedures yourself is effectively free, it is not generally recommended. It should be attempted by only the most experienced care providers who have both the time required and the experience of drawing up care policies and procedures.
Paid options for care policies and procedures
Hiring a social care consultant can be effective but very expensive, as consultants typically charge thousands of pounds for a full library of policies.
Template services are more affordable and come with a subscription that offers regular updates. However, the quality of the templates can be variable.
Digital systems are the newest solution on the market. The policies and procedures are written by experts with the same level of knowledge and experience as consultants. They will receive regular updates by teams who monitor the latest changes in their sector. The system can be accessible anytime, anywhere so staff can access any policy or procedure they need via an app on their mobile phone.
Digital systems are much cheaper than consultants but may be more expensive than subscription services. Their main selling point is their ease of access, reliable updates, and their easy integration with complementary care software solutions.
CQC Policies and procedures software solutions
CQC policies and procedures are a vital part of running a care service. But deciding what policies and procedures you need for your particular care service is a complex task. Then you must create and constantly update these policies and procedures. All this while dealing with the day to day running of your care home.
In the past, providers would outsource the policy and procedures work to expensive consultants, but today’s software solutions offer digital systems that can handle everything for you at a much lower cost. Best of all, they come with easy access via mobile app, with reporting and analytics to show which users have viewed which policies and procedures.
Access Policies and Procedures is our market leading policies and procedures solution, giving you all the documentation you need to implement and maintain CQC regulatory compliance. Watch a short video demonstration of our software.
Download our free contents list of policies and procedures for domiciliary/community or residential care settings via the links below:
FAQ
What policies and procedures are required for CQC?
Care providers in England must have a range of policies and procedures to meet Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulations, including, safeguarding, infection prevention and control, medication management, health and safety, complaints handling, and staff training and supervision.
These must align with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities Regulations) and reflect the CQC’s Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs).
How often should CQC policies be updated?
Policies should be reviewed at least annually, but also whenever, regulations or legislation change, CQC publishes new guidance, or following incidents or inspections.
With Access Policies & Procedures, updates are applied automatically, so you don’t need to manually track regulatory changes.
What happens if policies are outdated during a CQC inspection?
Outdated or inconsistent policies can lead to, compliance breaches, lower CQC ratings, requirement notices or enforcement action.
Inspectors expect policies to reflect current practice, not just to exist on paper.
What is Access Policies & Procedures software?
It’s a digital solution that provides expert-written, CQC-aligned policies and procedures for health and social care providers, designed to reduce admin and support ongoing compliance.
You get:
- A complete policy library
- Automatic updates in line with regulation changes
- Centralised access for your entire team
Can I customise the policies to my service?
Yes. Policies can be tailored to reflect:
- Your specific service type (care home, domiciliary care, supported living)
- Internal processes and workflows
- Branding and operational requirements
This ensures documentation is both compliant and relevant to your organisation.
Learn how Access Policies and Procedures can help you implement and maintain CQC regulatory compliance!
