Where our data comes from

The registers

All 15,836 homes come from two public registers: 14,855 from the Care Quality Commission’s directory of registered services in England, and 981 from the Care Inspectorate’s datastore in Scotland. Both are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We read them every week.

What each register holds

In England, the directory says whether a home is registered as a nursing home, a residential home or both, and which needs it is registered to support. It does not carry beds or ratings, so we read both from the CQC’s own published data for each home: 13,622 English homes have a CQC rating. A home with no rating has not been marked down; it has not been inspected or assessed since it registered.

In Scotland, the datastore carries beds, single rooms, the main area of care and the Care Inspectorate’s grades from 1 to 6 (939 homes are graded). It does not separate nursing homes from residential homes the way the CQC does, so Scottish homes are not labelled either way. That is a gap in the record, not in the home.

What we leave out

Children’s homes: in England they are regulated by Ofsted, and the few on these registers that care only for children, along with Scotland’s homes for children and young people, are not part of this directory. The Scottish register also publishes managers’ names and email addresses; those are individual people’s details and we do not republish them.

Corrections

If a registration detail is wrong here it is almost certainly wrong on the register, so correcting it with the regulator fixes it here at the next weekly refresh.

CareHomeUK is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Care Quality Commission or the Care Inspectorate.