Insights
National patterns & regional findings
Live analysis across all 104,938 rated adult social care locations in England.
Finding 1 · oversight
The inspection void
Of the 65,225 registered nursing, residential and domiciliary locations, 81% have never been inspected by the CQC, or not been inspected in over five years.
Finding 2 · geography
The North-South divide
Yorkshire & Humberside has the highest inadequate rate of any English region. Counterintuitively, London — with the most locations — has the lowest inadequate rate at just 3.1%.
Finding 3 · care type
Nursing homes are twice as likely to be inadequate
Nursing home residents — the most medically complex and vulnerable — are in settings where 6% are rated Inadequate, more than double the 2.5% rate in domiciliary care.
Finding 4 · local authorities
Crisis hotspots vs excellence clusters
Halton — a small borough between Liverpool and Warrington — has an inadequate rate of 13.6%, four times the national average. Meanwhile South Gloucestershire and Devon anchor a South West excellence cluster.
Highest inadequate rate (min. 50 locations)
- Newham11.3%
- Torbay10.5%
- Halton10.1%
- Portsmouth9.8%
- Waltham Forest7.9%
- Southend-on-Sea7.7%
- Nottingham7.6%
- Southwark7.5%
- Trafford7.5%
- Barnsley6.9%
Highest outstanding rate (min. 50 locations)
- South Gloucestershire12.2%
- Devon10.2%
- Westmorland and Furness9.6%
- Suffolk9.1%
- Trafford8.7%
- Nottinghamshire8.7%
- Wigan7.9%
- Plymouth7.4%
- County Durham7.1%
- Windsor and Maidenhead7%
Finding 5 · systemic mediocrity
The “below Good” crisis zones
Looking at Inadequate + Requires Improvement combined reveals a different picture: areas where roughly one in three providers fall below the basic Good standard — a systemic problem invisible in Inadequate counts alone.
Highest combined below-Good rate (min. 100 locations)
- Luton31.4%
- Medway30.1%
- West Northamptonshire29.7%
- Norfolk29.6%
- Sandwell29.2%
- Dudley29%
- Bexley28.5%
- Portsmouth27.3%
- Leicester26.1%
- Greenwich26%