How Current Are CQC Ratings for Dementia Care Providers in England?

When families search for dementia care, CQC ratings are often the first thing they look at. But how much can you rely on a rating that may be years out of date? We analysed CQC data on nearly 20,000 dementia care providers across England to find out.

What the ratings show

Of the 19,982 providers in CQC's dataset, 62% hold a rating of Good or Outstanding. A further 12% are rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate. The remaining 25%, around 5,000 providers, have no published CQC rating at all.

On the surface, those numbers look broadly positive. The majority of providers meet or exceed CQC standards. But the picture changes when you look at how old those ratings are.

The age of ratings

The median age of an Outstanding rating is 6.3 years. For Good, it's 4.7 years. Even Requires Improvement and Inadequate ratings, where you might expect more frequent follow-up, have a median age of 3.4 and 3.6 years respectively.

Across all providers with a known inspection date, 82% were last inspected more than 3 years ago. 41% were last inspected more than 5 years ago. The oldest rating in the dataset dates back over 14 years.

A lot can change in a care setting over that time. Staff turnover, changes in management, new residents with different needs: any of these could shift the quality of care in either direction. A rating from 2019 or 2020 may say very little about the care being delivered today.

Things are moving

CQC has acknowledged the backlog. The regulator is working to complete 9,000 assessments by September 2026 and carried out 50% more inspections in November 2025 compared to the same month the year before. That's a meaningful acceleration.

What families can do in the meantime

CQC ratings remain a useful starting point, but they work best alongside other information: visiting in person, speaking to staff, reading recent reviews, and checking what specialisms a provider actually offers.

That's why we built the Dementia Directory. It brings together CQC data on dementia care providers across England into a single, free, searchable tool: so families can find and compare providers by location, service type, rating, and more.