Last Updated on September 21, 2026
The law says a care home’s CQC rating must be on its website within 21 days of publication. The regulator’s own register suggests most families never get as far as that website.
Finding
Only 3,075 of England’s 14,896 registered care homes, 20.6%, had a web address on the CQC register that belonged to that home alone on the file dated 26 August 2026. In a random check of 40 of those homes on 21 September 2026, 17 addresses did not open a working page for the home.
Source: Whito, whito.co.uk/care-homes/guides/display-cqc-rating-on-website, September 2026. Free to quote with a link to this page.
A note before we start. This is marketing guidance for care providers, not legal advice. Whito is not connected to the Care Quality Commission. Register figures are Whito’s own counts from the CQC’s public data file, which is published under the Open Government Licence. We name no individual home. Check your own obligations against CQC guidance. Corrections: hello@whito.co.uk.
What Regulation 20A requires
Regulation 20A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 says a provider’s website must show the most recent rating, the CQC’s web address, and where on the CQC’s site the assessment can be read. CQC’s guidance, last updated 26 November 2025 and read on 21 September 2026, adds the practical detail.
| Point | What CQC says |
|---|---|
| Where | At the location, and “on websites where you describe your service” |
| How fast | No later than 21 calendar days after the rating is published on CQC’s website |
| During a review | You must still display the rating, and may add a note that you have asked for a review |
| How | CQC provides an online widget, and you may use your own materials |
| Inherited ratings | If you show a rating awarded to a previous provider, you must make that clear |
| Misleading displays | CQC “may take action against a provider that displays false or misleading ratings information” |
Sources: Regulation 20A on legislation.gov.uk and CQC: how providers must display ratings.
Most homes know this rule. The problem sits one step earlier: whether a family can reach the page where the rating is meant to be.
What we checked
Families are told to check the CQC register first, and the CQC profile is often the page they land on before a provider’s own site. The website link on that profile comes from the register. So we read the register’s website field for every care home in England, then opened a sample of the addresses the way a family would.
- The register. CQC care directory file dated 26 August 2026. Care homes are locations whose service types include residential or nursing homes: 14,896 in total.
- The address test. For each home we compared its website address with every other registered service in England. If the exact same address appears against two or more services, it is shared. That usually means a group homepage rather than a page about the home.
- The spot check. From the 3,075 homes whose address is theirs alone, we drew 40 at random with a fixed seed (20260921), opened each address in a desktop browser on 21 September 2026, and recorded what loaded and whether a CQC rating was on that page.
What the register holds
| Website field on the CQC register | Care homes | Share of 14,896 |
|---|---|---|
| No website recorded | 6,771 | 45.5% |
| Address shared with at least one other registered service | 4,880 | 32.8% |
| Address belonging to this home alone | 3,075 | 20.6% |
| A council or other .gov.uk site | 169 | 1.1% |
| The CQC’s own website | 1 | 0.0% |
Of the 4,880 homes with a shared address, 1,866 share it with 20 or more registered services. The most shared single address on the file is used by 209 care homes. A family clicking through from any one of them arrives at a group homepage and has to find the home again.
That is not a breach of anything. Group sites usually carry a page for each home, often with the rating on it. It does mean the register sends people to the front door of the group instead of the home they were reading about.
What the 40 addresses opened
| What happened on 21 September 2026 | Homes |
|---|---|
| Page opened and showed the CQC rating (widget 14, own badge 1, in text 1) | 16 |
| Page opened with no rating on it (no CQC reference 4, CQC mentioned without a rating 3) | 7 |
| Site could not be reached, including domains that no longer resolve | 7 |
| Browser security warning before the page | 4 |
| Page not found | 2 |
| Coming soon holding page | 1 |
| Server error | 1 |
| An unrelated page on the provider’s site | 1 |
| A different, unrelated business now owns the address | 1 |
| Did not open a working page for the home | 17 of 40 |
Where we could read the rating on the page, 11 of the 16, it matched the regulator’s ratings file. The ratings people reach are right. The gap is in reaching them.
The mistake most homes are making
Homes treat the website and the CQC profile as two separate jobs. The register link is set once, at registration, and never opened again. Domains lapse, sites move to a group platform, security certificates cover the address without “www” but not the one with it, and the register keeps pointing at the old place.
The principle: the web address on your CQC profile is part of your website. Check it like a page.
Start: open your own register link this week
- Search for your home on the CQC website and open your location page.
- Click the website link on it, on a phone and on a laptop. Note exactly where it lands.
- If it lands anywhere other than a working page about your home, get it changed. Profile queries go to enquiries@cqc.org.uk. Our guide on getting your website onto your CQC profile covers the route, which is the same for care homes.
- Check the page it lands on shows your current rating. The rating check guide shows where to confirm it.
Build: put the widget on every page that describes the home
CQC’s widget updates itself when a new rating is published, which removes the 21 day deadline as a task anyone has to remember. It was the most common display in our sample by a distance. Place it on the home’s own page, not only in the site footer, and make sure it shows the location rating, not the provider’s.
If you add your own badge or text instead, put the publication date beside it and diary a check for every inspection.
Scale: groups should point each home at its own page
For a group, the fix is a spreadsheet job: every location, its register address, and the page it should be. Ask for each location’s register address to be the home’s own page on your site. A family who arrives on the page about the home they chose sees the rating, the fees you publish and the manager’s name, instead of a search box.
It also helps with AI assistants, which read what the register and your pages say. Our study of AI care home recommendations found three of twelve ratings stated by Google AI Mode did not match the regulator’s file on 8 September 2026. If that has happened to your home, our guide to what to do when an AI assistant gets your CQC rating wrong sets out the order to fix things in.
What this does not show
- Forty homes is a spot check, not a sector rate. The 17 of 40 describes this sample on one day.
- Each address was opened once, with unreachable sites tried twice. Some failures may be temporary.
- We checked the page the register address opens. A home may show its rating on another page of its site.
- A shared address is not a failing. Many shared addresses belong to small providers whose care home and home care service use one site.
- Ratings were compared with the CQC ratings file dated 4 August 2026. One page showed a rating published after that file date, and we did not count that as a mismatch.
- This is not a view on whether any provider meets Regulation 20A. We name no home and grade no provider.
Download the data
The register counts, the shared-address bands, the 20 most shared addresses on the file and the spot check outcomes are in one CSV: whito-cqc-care-home-web-addresses-sep-2026.csv. Every register figure can be reproduced from the CQC’s public file. The home-level working sits in the care homes data file.
Common questions
Does a care home have to show its CQC rating on its website?
Yes, if it has been rated. Regulation 20A requires the most recent rating on websites where the provider describes the service, and CQC’s guidance says it must appear no later than 21 calendar days after publication.
Can we leave the old rating up while we ask for a review?
No. CQC says the new rating must still be displayed during a review request. You may add a note explaining that you have asked for one.
Is the CQC widget compulsory?
No. CQC provides it and says you may use your own materials. The widget updates itself, which is why many homes use it.
How do we change the website shown on our CQC profile?
CQC’s profile guidance directs queries about the information on your profile page to enquiries@cqc.org.uk. Our step-by-step guide covers the route.
The takeaway. Your rating is only as visible as the link that leads to it. Open your own register link today, then make sure the page it reaches shows the rating.
See what search engines and AI assistants can read on your site with the free Visibility Check: seventeen checks, about twenty seconds, no email. Then list your home free in the Whito directory. Money cannot buy either.
