What the CQC ratings mean

The four ratings

The five key questions

For each service, the CQC asks five questions and gives each one a rating, alongside an overall rating:

• Safe — Are people protected from abuse and avoidable harm?
• Effective — Does people's care achieve good outcomes and promote a good quality of life, based on the best available evidence?
• Caring — Do staff treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect?
• Responsive — Are services organised to meet people's needs?
• Well-led — Are leadership, management and governance assuring high-quality, person-centred care?

"Not Rated" services

Not every service has a published rating. Most dentists are inspected but never scored on the four-point scale. And under the CQC's newer Single Assessment Framework, a location that provides several types of service can sit at Not Rated overall while its individual services are rated. Where that happens, we show the service-level ratings instead. A "Not Rated" label does not mean a service is poor; often it just has not been given one overall score.

Why the history matters

A rating is a snapshot of one inspection. On its own it cannot tell you whether a service is on the way up or on the way down. That is why every service page here keeps the older ratings as well as the latest one, and shows when the service changed owner. A drop in rating that lines up with a change of provider is worth a second look. See how ratings break down across England →