What a CQC Requires Improvement rating means for families

By CareFinder Team · Published 2026-09-21 · Last reviewed 2026-09-21

A Requires Improvement rating means the Care Quality Commission found an English care home is not performing as well as it should and has told it how it must improve. The home stays open and is not judged unsafe overall. Families should read which of the five key questions fell short, check the inspection date, and ask the manager what has changed since.

A Requires Improvement rating means the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected a care home in England, found it was not performing as well as it should, and told the home how it must improve. It is the third of four ratings, above Inadequate and below Good. It does not close the home, and it does not by itself mean your relative is unsafe, but it does mean you should read the report rather than rely on the one-word label.

This is general information to help you weigh up a home. If you are worried about someone's immediate safety, contact the council's adult safeguarding team, or the police in an emergency.

What does Requires Improvement actually mean?

CQC is the regulator of health and adult social care in England. It gives most care homes one of four overall ratings, and defines them in plain terms:

• Outstanding: the service is performing exceptionally well.
• Good: the service is performing well and meeting CQC's expectations.
• Requires improvement: the service is not performing as well as it should and CQC has told the service how it must improve.
• Inadequate: the service is performing badly and CQC has taken action against the person or organisation that runs it.

The difference between the bottom two matters. With Inadequate, enforcement action has already been taken. With Requires Improvement, the home has been told what to put right and is expected to do it.

CQC says that good care is the minimum people should expect. So Requires Improvement is not a pass with a few comments. It is the regulator saying the home has fallen below the standard it should be meeting in at least some areas.

Why the overall rating can hide a mixed picture

The overall rating is built from separate ratings for five key questions:

• Safe: are people protected from abuse and avoidable harm?
• Effective: does care achieve good outcomes and follow the best available evidence?
• Caring: do staff treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect?
• Responsive: is the service organised to meet each person's needs?
• Well-led: do leadership and governance make sure care is high quality and the culture is open and fair?

CQC weights the five questions equally. Under its published rules for reaching a rating, the overall rating will normally be Good if no key question is Inadequate and no more than one is Requires Improvement. If two or more key questions are rated Requires Improvement, the overall rating will normally be Requires Improvement.

That means two homes with the same overall rating can be very different. One might be rated Good for Caring, Effective and Responsive but fall short on Safe and Well-led because of paperwork, audits and medicines records. Another might fall short on Caring. Most families would see those as quite different situations, which is why the table of five ratings near the top of the report deserves more attention than the headline.

The percentage score

Newer CQC reports also show a percentage score, to show whether a service sits at the upper or lower end of its rating. CQC's bands are 39 to 62% for Requires Improvement and 63 to 87% for Good. A home scoring close to the top of the Requires Improvement band is near Good; one near the bottom is closer to Inadequate. Older reports do not carry scores, so do not worry if you cannot find one.

CQC also applies a limit so that poor areas are not hidden by a decent average: if a key question scores in the Good range but any single quality statement within it shows significant shortfalls, that key question is capped at Requires Improvement.

How to read the inspection report

Every CQC-registered home has a page on the CQC website with its reports. Set aside twenty minutes and look for these things.

1. The date. A rating describes what inspectors found at the time. A report from several years ago may describe a different manager, different staff and different owners. A recent one is a much better guide to today.
2. Which key questions fell short. Note exactly which of the five are rated Requires Improvement.
3. Breaches of regulations. The report says whether the home was in breach of any legal regulations and what CQC required it to do. A breach is more serious than a recommendation.
4. What people said. Reports include what residents, relatives and staff told inspectors. Look at whether people felt safe, listened to and well cared for.
5. The history. Look at previous reports on the same page. A home that was Good for years and dipped once is different from a home that has been rated Requires Improvement several times in a row.
6. Any enforcement action. CQC says it shows clearly on a provider's page when it is using its enforcement powers.

Pay particular attention to anything about staffing levels, medicines, falls, pressure care, food and drink, and how the home responds to complaints and incidents. Those touch daily life most directly.

What happens to the home after this rating?

The home carries on operating. CQC's guidance for adult social care services says that at a first rating of Requires Improvement it will write to the provider, warning that further Requires Improvement ratings may amount to a breach of the regulation on good governance, and pointing to sources of help. CQC may ask the provider to return an improvement action plan within 28 days, showing how and by when it will reach at least Good. It may also ask for a meeting with the provider, the registered manager and the council or NHS body that commissions care there. CQC notes that this guidance page is under review, so the detail may change.

Where regulations have been breached, CQC can go further. Its powers include requirement notices and warning notices that set out what must improve and by when, conditions on the provider's registration, special measures, fines and prosecution.

CQC does not publish a fixed date by which a home will be looked at again. It monitors information it receives about a service and can return sooner if concerns are raised. So a Requires Improvement rating can stay on display for a long time even if the home has improved. That is a good reason to ask the manager directly.

Homes cannot quietly hide the rating. Regulation 20A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 requires providers in England to display their most recent rating conspicuously at the premises and on their website, with the date it was given.

Should you still consider the home?

There is no rule that says you must avoid a home rated Requires Improvement, and no rule that says a Good home will suit your relative. A sensible way to decide:

• Look at which areas fell short. Concerns about Safe or Caring deserve more weight for most families than a shortfall confined to record keeping, although weak leadership tends to affect everything else over time.
• Look at the direction of travel. Has the home had a new manager since? Did an earlier report show the same problems?
• Visit, more than once if you can, including at a mealtime or at the weekend. Watch how staff speak to residents and how quickly call bells are answered.
• Compare with nearby alternatives, including how far family would have to travel to visit.

Questions to ask the manager

A good manager will expect these questions and answer them without defensiveness.

• What did CQC ask you to change, and what have you done about each point?
• Can I see your action plan, or a summary of it?
• Were you the manager at the time of the inspection? If not, when did you start?
• How many care staff and nurses are on duty during the day, at night and at weekends, and how much do you rely on agency staff?
• How do you check that medicines are given correctly?
• How do residents and relatives raise concerns, and what changed after the last complaint?
• Has the council or the NHS placed any restriction on new admissions here?

Vague answers, or blaming the inspectors, tell you something. Specific answers with dates tell you something too.

What if your relative already lives there?

A new Requires Improvement rating for a home your relative already lives in is unsettling, but it is rarely a reason to move someone in a hurry. Moving is disruptive, particularly for a person living with dementia.

• Read the report and compare it with what you and your relative actually experience.
• Ask the manager for a meeting, or whether there will be a relatives' meeting, to explain the findings and the plan.
• If the council or the NHS funds or arranged the placement, tell the social worker or care coordinator about any worries. Commissioners monitor the homes they use.
• If you see poor care, raise it with the home first through its complaints procedure. By law, every service must have one.

CQC does not take up individual complaints on your behalf, but it asks people to tell it about poor care because that information helps decide when and where to inspect. If you have complained to the home or the council and are unhappy with the response, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can investigate complaints about adult care services in England, whether the care is council-funded or paid for privately.

How is this different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

CQC ratings apply only in England. The other nations have their own regulators and do not use the phrase in the same way.

• Scotland: the Care Inspectorate grades services on a six-point scale from Unsatisfactory (1) to Excellent (6). The nearest equivalents are Adequate (3), where strengths just outweigh weaknesses, and Weak (2). The Care Inspectorate says continued performance at Adequate is not acceptable.
• Wales: since 1 April 2025, Care Inspectorate Wales has given care homes a rating for each of four themes: well-being, care and support, leadership and management, and environment. Each theme is rated Excellent, Good, Requires improvement or Requires significant improvement. There is no single overall rating, and services must display their ratings.
• Northern Ireland: the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) inspects nursing and residential homes and publishes its inspection reports online. Read the findings and any areas for improvement the report lists.

Frequently asked questions

Is a care home rated Requires Improvement safe?

Not necessarily unsafe, and not necessarily safe. The overall rating combines five key questions, so check the separate rating for Safe and read what inspectors found under it. If Safe itself is rated Requires Improvement, read that section closely and ask the manager what has changed.

How long does a Requires Improvement rating last?

Until CQC assesses the home again and publishes a new rating. CQC does not publish a fixed timetable for this, so a rating can remain in place long after improvements have been made. Always check the date on the report.

Can a home rated Requires Improvement still take new residents?

Yes, in general. The rating itself does not stop admissions. CQC can place conditions on a provider's registration where it takes enforcement action, and a council may choose to pause its own placements, so it is reasonable to ask the manager whether any restriction is in place.

Will the council pay for a home with this rating?

A Requires Improvement rating does not by itself rule a home out of council funding. Councils make their own commissioning decisions and monitor the quality of homes they use. Ask the social worker how the council views the home and whether it is currently placing people there.

What is the difference between Requires Improvement and Inadequate?

Requires Improvement means the service is not performing as well as it should and has been told how to improve. Inadequate means the service is performing badly and CQC has taken action against whoever runs it. Inadequate is the more serious finding.

Does the home have to tell me its rating?

Yes. Providers in England must display their most recent CQC rating at the home and on their website, with the date. You can also look up any home on the CQC website and read the full report for free.

Key takeaways

• Requires Improvement is CQC's third rating of four: the home is not performing as well as it should and has been told how to improve. It applies in England only.
• The overall label hides detail. Check which of the five key questions fell short, whether any regulations were breached, and the percentage score if there is one.
• Check the inspection date and the home's earlier reports. One dip is different from repeated Requires Improvement ratings.
• Ask the manager what CQC required and what has been done. Specific answers are a good sign.
• If your relative already lives there, talk to the manager and the funding council before considering a move, and report poor care to the home, then the Ombudsman if needed, and tell CQC.
• Scotland uses grades 1 to 6, Wales rates four themes separately, and Northern Ireland's RQIA publishes inspection reports.