11 May 2026 · CareTime
The Care Quality Commission's consultation on the new adult social care assessment framework closes at 5pm on 12 June 2026. The new framework is built around 24 Key Lines of Enquiry split across the five existing quality questions (Safe 6, Effective 6, Caring 3, Responsive 4, Well-Led 5). The consultation is the last meaningful chance for care home managers to influence wording, weighting, and what kinds of evidence inspectors will accept, before the final framework lands in summer 2026 and implementation begins toward the end of the year.
This post is a practical guide for managers who want to respond but do not have time to read the full draft. It covers what the CQC is asking, what to focus on, and where the technology and evidence questions are most worth a sentence or two of feedback. Even a short, specific response from a real provider is worth more than no response at all.
The current Single Assessment Framework is being replaced with four sector-specific frameworks: adult social care, mental health, primary and community care, and hospitals. The adult social care draft is the one that affects care home managers directly. Key points from the published draft:
The CQC's consultation page hosts the full draft and the response form. Both are linked from the CQC's improvement plans page.
The CQC has explicitly said the draft will be refined based on consultation feedback. Industry bodies will submit — but inspectors and CQC framework authors weight responses from named, real providers more heavily on the operational questions (what does evidence look like? what is realistic on a typical Wednesday in a 30-bed home?) than they do trade body submissions. A 300-word email from a registered manager that names one specific KLOE and one specific evidence question is worth more than a thousand-word industry response.
The cost of submitting is low. The cost of the wording landing wrong and then living for three years is high.
A useful response covers three things. The CQC's published form is structured around the quality questions, but you do not need to answer every section. Picking two or three KLOEs you have a real view on, and writing one paragraph each, is enough.
The new framework has five Well-Led KLOEs. Inspectors will be looking for "ongoing oversight of risk, performance, and outcomes." For a 30-bed home with a deputy manager who is also covering shifts, "ongoing oversight" cannot mean a 40-page governance report every month. If you have a view on what realistic, dated, factual oversight looks like at your scale, this is the section to write about. Real examples — a daily handover log, a weekly call summary email, a monthly incident review — are exactly the kind of detail the framework authors are short of.
This KLOE is new and the wording is still relatively loose in the draft. The risk for managers is that the inspector definition of "feedback" gets interpreted narrowly — only formal complaints, only resident surveys — and misses the wider evidence base most homes already have: phone calls from families, conversations at the door, comments to staff, GP feedback, social worker reviews. If you record any of these in a structured way, name how you do it in your response. The framework wording is more likely to recognise your evidence type if a real provider has flagged it.
The draft does not currently say much about technology. This is itself worth a response. A short paragraph noting that you use [name your systems] for [purpose] and that the inspector should expect to see [type of record] is a useful contribution — it nudges the final framework toward acknowledging what 2026 evidence actually looks like rather than what it looked like in 2018. Examples worth flagging:
You are not arguing for any specific product. You are arguing that the framework should expect inspectors to know what these categories of evidence look like.
If you want a starting point, this is roughly what a useful response looks like. Adapt freely.
Quality question(s) commented on: Well-Led, Responsive.
About me: Registered manager, [home name], [bed count] beds, [region]. Service rated [Good / RI / Outstanding] at last inspection.
Comment on Well-Led: The five KLOEs are broadly the right shape, but "ongoing oversight of risk, performance and outcomes" needs an explicit acknowledgment that smaller services will evidence this differently from corporate operators. For us, ongoing oversight is a daily handover log, a weekly summary of call activity, and a monthly review of incidents and complaints. We do not produce a separate governance report. If the final wording assumes a governance report, smaller services will be inadvertently penalised.
Comment on Responsive — Listening and responding to feedback: The wording should recognise non-formal feedback alongside surveys and complaints. We hear from families primarily by phone, including calls that come outside office hours; we now capture these in a daily summary so we can spot patterns. If "feedback" is defined narrowly in the final framework, providers will be pushed back into formal survey machinery that does not reflect how families actually communicate.
Comment on technology evidence: The draft does not currently say what good technology evidence looks like. We would value language that recognises (a) digital care records, (b) call activity logs and AI call summaries, (c) family communication apps, and (d) sensor-based monitoring as evidence categories that inspectors should be familiar with. Otherwise inspector experience will vary widely between regions.
Signed: [Name], [Role], [Date].
This is roughly 250 words. It takes 20 minutes to write. It is more useful than any silence.
The CQC's consultation response page is on the CQC website under their improvement plans. There is an online response form and an option to submit by email. The consultation closes at 5pm on 12 June 2026 — earlier submission is fine and reduces the risk that the deadline catches the inspection diary.
For transparency: CareTime is responding as a sector supplier. Our response focuses on (a) the Responsive feedback KLOE, where structured call records are evidence the framework should acknowledge, and (b) the Well-Led governance question, where a daily Morning Brief is the kind of factual, dated, sustainable oversight artefact a smaller service can actually produce. We are responding as a supplier, not as a provider — we name that openly. The CQC has separately said it welcomes supplier responses where they are clearly labelled as such.
When does the consultation close? 5pm on 12 June 2026. Pilots over summer 2026. Final framework summer 2026. Implementation toward the end of 2026.
Does my service still operate under the Single Assessment Framework until then? Yes. The current SAF continues until the new sector-specific framework is implemented at the end of 2026.
Can I respond as an individual manager rather than on behalf of the organisation? Yes. The form has an option for individual responses. Many of the most useful operational responses come from named individual managers rather than corporate compliance teams.
Will industry bodies submit? Yes — Care England, Care Provider Alliance, National Care Forum, and several others will submit. Their responses tend to be policy-level. Individual provider responses are weighted differently and tend to influence the wording of specific KLOEs and rating characteristics.
Does CareTime help with CQC evidence? Silent Guard produces dated, factual records of every call coming into a home — including a daily Morning Brief that managers can use under the Responsive feedback KLOE and the Well-Led oversight KLOEs. It does not write policies or generate evidence; it records what actually happened.
If you would like a factual record of every call into your home before the new framework lands, Silent Guard's £49/30 days pilot is the simplest way to start. No phone system changes. Setup within a week. The Morning Brief lands in your inbox each day from then on.
CareTime's Silent Guard is available now for a 30-day pilot. £49, 1-page pilot letter — exit by reply-email.
Join the 30-Day Pilot
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