CQC Notifications: What to Report and When

Statutory notifications are one of the few parts of CQC compliance with a hard legal deadline attached. Most of what you do for CQC — audits, evidence, policy reviews — is good practice you control the pace of. Notifications are different. Certain events trigger a legal duty to tell CQC, and for some of them the clock starts the moment the event happens.

Getting notifications wrong is also one of the easier ways to turn a single incident into two problems: the incident itself, and a separate governance concern about why you did not report it. This guide covers which events are notifiable, the deadlines, how to submit, and the mistakes that catch small care homes out.

What a statutory notification is

A statutory notification is a formal report you are legally required to make to CQC when a specific event occurs at your service. The duty sits in the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009 — the same regulations that govern your registration, statement of purpose, and the people CQC holds accountable for the service.

This is separate from your duty of candour under the Regulated Activities Regulations (telling the person affected and their family when something goes wrong), and separate from safeguarding referrals to the local authority. The same incident can trigger all three. A fall causing a fracture, for example, may require a safeguarding referral, a duty of candour conversation, and a CQC notification — three different processes, three different recipients.

Which events you must notify

The notification duties are split across several regulations. The ones that matter most for a residential or nursing home are these.

Death of a service user (Regulation 16)

You must notify CQC of the death of a person using your service where it happened while services were being provided, or as a consequence of the regulated activity. The regulation requires notification "without delay." This includes expected deaths as well as unexpected ones — the duty is not limited to deaths that look like a failure of care. You report the death; CQC decides what, if anything, follows.

Other incidents (Regulation 18)

Regulation 18 covers the broadest set of notifiable events, and it is the one most often missed. You must notify CQC without delay of incidents including:

Injuries to a service user that require treatment by a healthcare professional, or that the service user's death may be a result of
Any abuse or allegation of abuse in relation to a service user — including where the allegation has not yet been substantiated
Any incident reported to, or investigated by, the police
DoLS outcomes or withdrawn requests/applications, notified when the outcome is known or at withdrawal
Events that stop or threaten to stop the service running safely — for example a fire, flood, infectious-disease outbreak, or loss of utilities that affects safe care

The "allegation of abuse" trigger is the one that trips managers up. You do not wait to confirm whether abuse occurred. An allegation is itself the notifiable event. Reporting it is not an admission that it happened — it is a record that you took it seriously and acted.

Deaths and absences under the Mental Health Act (Regulation 17)

If your service accommodates people who are liable to be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, you must notify CQC without delay of the death or unauthorised absence of any such person, including a description of the circumstances. This applies to a minority of care homes, but where it applies the duty is specific.

Changes to your registration (Regulation 15)

Regulation 15 requires you to notify CQC, in writing and as soon as it is reasonably practicable, of changes to the people and structure behind the registration — including where a person other than the registered person begins to carry on or manage the activity, a change of nominated individual, or insolvency events. These structural duties sit with the registered manager and the nominated individual — the two roles CQC holds accountable for the service.

The deadlines: "without delay" vs "as soon as reasonably practicable"

The regulations use two standards, and the difference matters.

"Without delay" — applies to deaths (Reg 16, Reg 17) and the other incidents in Regulation 18. In practice CQC expects these as soon as you are aware of the event and the immediate situation is under control. Do not let an internal investigation become a reason to delay the notification; you can report what you know and update CQC as more becomes clear.
"As soon as it is reasonably practicable" — applies to the registration changes in Regulation 15. This gives you a little more room, but it is not an open-ended deadline. A change of manager or nominated individual should be notified promptly, not at the next routine touchpoint.

Neither standard means "when you get round to it." If in doubt, notify earlier rather than later — an early notification is never a finding; a late one can be.

How to submit a notification

Notifications are made through the CQC provider portal or the relevant notification forms on the CQC website. CQC publishes a specific form for each notification type, and the death-of-a-service-user notification differs from the other-incidents notification.

A workable internal process looks like this:

Recognise the trigger. Build the notifiable-event list into your incident-reporting form so any qualifying event flags the notification duty automatically.
Confirm the immediate situation is safe — the person, other residents, staff.
Submit the correct form through the provider portal, recording what you knew at the time.
Log the notification in your own records: date, time, who submitted it, the CQC reference. This is your evidence the duty was met.
Update CQC if the picture changes materially after submission.

What happens if you do not notify

Failure to make a required notification is an offence under the regulations, and CQC can take enforcement action including a fixed penalty notice or, for more serious or repeated failures, prosecution. Beyond the legal consequence, a missed notification is a governance signal. When an inspector finds an incident in your records that was never notified, it raises a question that goes wider than the incident itself: what else is not being reported, and does the manager understand their statutory duties?

This is why notifications connect directly to the Well-Led key question. A reliable notification process is evidence of exactly the governance CQC is looking for. For more on evidencing governance, see our Well-Led evidence guide.

Common mistakes

Waiting to confirm an allegation before reporting it. The allegation is the trigger, not the finding.
Treating a notification as an admission of fault. It is a record that you acted, not a confession.
Confusing the three duties. Safeguarding referral, duty of candour, and CQC notification are separate — an event can require all three.
No internal log. If you cannot show when and how you notified, you cannot evidence the duty was met.
Forgetting registration changes. A new manager or nominated individual is notifiable under Regulation 15 — it is easy to focus only on incident notifications and miss the structural ones.

Where notifications fit in your evidence

A clean notification trail — every notifiable event logged, notified, and cross-referenced against your incident records and your Provider Information Return — is one of the clearest pieces of governance evidence you can hold. Inconsistency between your incident log, your notifications, and your PIR is itself a finding; consistency demonstrates control.

If you want to check whether your wider evidence holds together before your next assessment, our free CQC Evidence Gap Checker walks through what CQC expects under each key question and highlights where your documentation is thin. And to see how ready you are overall, the CQC Readiness Self-Assessment takes about 15 minutes and gives you a prioritised action list.

This is general guidance based on the published Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009 and CQC guidance current at the date above. Notification requirements and forms can change — always check the current guidance on cqc.org.uk for your specific situation. Not legal advice.