Our research methodology

How we build our guidance

We build our policy templates, tools, readiness logic, and blog guidance directly from the primary regulations and official guidance that govern adult social care in England — not from secondary commentary or other vendors' material. When we make a regulatory claim, we check it against the legislation or the regulator's own current page rather than paraphrasing from memory.

CQC's guidance changes. We record the date each tool and statutory claim was last verified against its source, and we re-check against the live CQC and legislation.gov.uk pages as they are updated.

Primary sources

The CQC quality statements, evidence categories, notification duties, rating principles, and statutory citations used across InspectReady come from these current primary sources:

• CQC — Assessment framework
• CQC — Consultation: draft sector-specific assessment frameworks
• CQC — Evidence categories
• CQC — How we reach a rating
• CQC — Notifications
• Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009 — legislation.gov.uk
• Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 17 — legislation.gov.uk
• HSE — RIDDOR reportable incidents
• Skills for Care — Care Certificate standards

How we verify statutory claims

Every statutory citation in the product — the regulation a CQC notification rests on, the Regulation 17 record-keeping duties behind the evidence pack, the Care Certificate standards — is verified against the primary legislation or official guidance, quoted rather than summarised where the exact wording matters. Where a claim cannot be grounded in a current primary source, we soften or remove it rather than present it as settled fact.

The CQC assessment framework is changing

InspectReady is built on CQC's single assessment framework — the five key questions and the 34 quality statements. That is the framework CQC applies today, and it is what the product maps your policies and evidence to.

CQC has consulted on replacing the quality statements with sector-specific assessment frameworks, and is piloting the replacement in practice. The single assessment framework has not been withdrawn, and CQC has not published the final wording of the replacement or the date it takes effect. We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume either that nothing is changing or that we have already handled it.

What that means for you right now:

• The product maps to the quality statements, and only to them. We have not re-mapped to the replacement framework, and we will not describe InspectReady as ready for it before CQC publishes it. A readiness claim against an unpublished framework would be a guess presented as a fact.
• Your existing evidence packs stay legible. Every pack records the framework version it was built under and prints it on the pack itself, so a pack you generate today remains readable later as a record of what you held and which framework it was organised against.
• What we will do when it lands. Re-map the policy and evidence structure to the published framework, leave the framework stamp on historical packs alone rather than relabelling them, and set out here what changed. Our guidance pages carry a last-reviewed date so you can judge how current each one is.
• What will not change. InspectReady does not assess your service, predict a rating, or tell you that you are compliant — under this framework or its replacement. It organises your evidence so you can show your own workings. It is an independent tool from Crocker Digital Ltd and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Care Quality Commission.

We last checked this against CQC's consultation and assessment framework pages on 12 August 2026. If it has moved on before we have, please tell us.

Who builds InspectReady

InspectReady is built by a researcher and software builder, not by a registered manager, clinician, nurse, or CQC inspector. We do not claim front-line care credentials. Our authority comes from working carefully and directly from primary sources — and from showing our workings on this page — rather than from professional care experience we do not have.

InspectReady is a product of Crocker Digital Ltd (Company No. 17008789), a UK technology company that builds compliance and workflow software for regulated sectors.

What InspectReady is — and is not

InspectReady provides tools and information to help you organise and prepare your CQC evidence. It does not provide professional, legal, or regulatory advice, and it is not a substitute for your own judgement or for advice from a suitably qualified professional.

• Our readiness indicator shows evidence coverage to guide your own preparation. It is not a CQC score, a rating, or a prediction of your rating.
• Our rating-principles explainer shows how CQC's published adult social-care principles normally combine key-question ratings. It is not a prediction of your rating — CQC can depart from the principles using professional judgement.
• Our starter policy templates are a structured starting point mapped to the CQC framework. Each carries an “adapt to your home” note and is not expert-reviewed off-the-shelf sign-off.
• Our notification log records your consideration of a notifiable event and its statutory basis. It does not replace CQC's online notification form or track statutory deadlines.

Questions or corrections

If you believe a claim on InspectReady is out of date or inaccurate, tell us and we will check it against the primary source and correct it. You can also read more about who we are.