Guide
How much does CQC registration cost?
Updated
The cost of CQC registration has a surprising answer: the application itself costs nothing. The money goes on annual fees once registered, and on getting the application right.
CQC registration fees: no application fee, then an annual fee
There is no separate charge for submitting an application. Every registered provider pays an annual fee instead, and the CQC states that those fees "cover all the costs of: initial registration, changes to your registration, and our activities associated with monitoring, inspection and rating" (cqc.org.uk: fees). The fee is due each year for as long as the registration exists.
How the annual fee is worked out
- Community social care (home care and similar): banded by the number of service users supported with regulated activities from each location.
- Residential care: banded, for each location, by the maximum number of service users that location is registered to accommodate.
- GP and healthcare providers: NHS GP services with a core contract are banded by the number of registered patients at the location; most other healthcare services are banded by the number of locations.
- The CQC's current fees scheme has applied to fees due since 1 April 2019 and the CQC says it "remains valid until further notice"; changing it needs a public consultation and the Secretary of State's consent. Use the fee tables published on cqc.org.uk rather than any third-party figure.
We deliberately do not print fee amounts here: the bands run to several pages and a stale number is worse than none. The structure above comes from the CQC's published fees scheme; read the pounds off that document.
The costs that are not the fee
- Registered manager time, most applications need a registered manager who meets the fit-person requirements, with an enhanced DBS check (currently charged per check by the Disclosure and Barring Service).
- Policies, statement of purpose and evidence, written in-house or bought as templates; either way, they must describe what you will actually do.
- Waiting time, you cannot trade the regulated activity while you wait, so months of pre-registration running costs are part of the real price.
Budgeting question answered, the next question is usually timing. See how the registration process works.