Document 1 of 2
Landlord letter of authority
Written permission from Joyce’s landlord for the agency to be run from the property. Joyce asked for it, her landlord gave it, and it went into the pack.
Client story · Home based domiciliary care · Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Starting a care agency from home: how Joyce Authentic Care got CQC registered
No office. No management team. An application that went quiet part way through. Joyce Aboga registered her domiciliary care agency with the Care Quality Commission from home, as the director, the Registered Manager and the Nominated Individual. This is how she did it.
- Registered from home, with the right evidence
- One person, both CQC roles
- Chased until it moved
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“I recommend Care Sync Experts confidently to any provider or potential provider to Collins and Millicent through their work and dedication I know they are valuable assets to the company. Hence I give Care Sync Experts big 5 stars all the way. Please keep up with the great work.”
Why Joyce Authentic Care choose us
- Provider
- Joyce Authentic Care Ltd
- Service
- Domiciliary care: personal care in people’s own homes
- Area
- Abingdon, Oxfordshire
- Base
- Registered from home
- Roles
- Director, Registered Manager and Nominated Individual
- Supports
- Adults 18 to 65, adults 65 and over, people living with dementia, people with a physical disability
- Outcome
- CQC registered
- Review
Watch Joyce story
Can You Register a CQC Care Agency From Home? Joyce Just Did.
Collins from Care Sync Experts walks through how Joyce registered from home, what happened when her application went quiet, how she prepared for an interview from both seats, and why we read out her whole review, including the part we got wrong.
What Are Domiciliary Care Contracts?
Joyce Authentic Care is a domiciliary care service in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It provides personal care in people’s own homes for older adults, adults aged 18 to 65, people living with dementia and people with a physical disability.
Joyce spent years on the front line of adult social care: personal care, medication support, safeguarding and end of life care. Her plan for the company is deliberately small. Quality over scale. A caseload she can do properly. Care workers matched to the people they support and paid fairly for the work.
Nobody needed to teach Joyce about care. What she needed was an application that said all of that in the way CQC expect to read it.
Can you run a care agency from home? Yes. Here is what it took.
In England, a domiciliary care agency can be registered with CQC at a home address, and Joyce Authentic Care was. What CQC needs to see is evidence that you are legally entitled to use that address, and that people’s records will be kept safely and securely there.
CQC lists evidence of legal occupancy among the supporting documents a homecare agency sends with its application. Joyce rents her home, so we needed to show that she was allowed to run a business from it, not only that she lived there. We prepared two documents:
Document 2 of 2
Declaration of legal occupancy
A declaration from Joyce, as Nominated Individual, setting out her entitlement to occupy and use the address as the agency’s base.
No office lease. No serviced office. Her home, with the right paperwork behind it.
Thinking of registering from home? Check these first
Your right to use the address
If you own the property, be ready to show it. If you rent, ask your landlord for written permission to run the business from there. If you have a mortgage, check your lender’s terms as well.
A private working space
Somewhere records can be locked away and calls with families, staff and professionals will not be overheard.
The rest of the household
How you will keep confidential information away from anyone else who lives there.
Where you will meet people
Interviews, supervision and training still need a suitable place, even if it is not your front room.
One address, everywhere
Your Statement of Purpose, application forms and business plan must all give the same location.
Starting from your kitchen table? Start here.
Tell us where you are starting from: working from home or from an office, holding both roles or building a team, or not sure yet. We will tell you what your application needs to get where Joyce is now.
One person, two roles
Joyce is the director, the Registered Manager and the Nominated Individual. CQC allows one person to be both the Registered Manager and the Nominated Individual in a very small organisation, but it is clear that this is not the ideal.
CQC lists evidence of legal occupancy among the supporting documents a homecare agency sends with its application. Joyce rents her home, so we needed to show that she was allowed to run a business from it, not only that she lived there. We prepared two documents:
So the interview asks more of a dual role applicant, not less. The Registered Manager has to show day to day leadership of the service. The Nominated Individual has to show they supervise how the regulated activity is managed. Same person, two sets of questions, and you have to switch between them in the room.
“In very small organisations, it may be necessary for the same person to be both the registered manager and the nominated individual, but this should be avoided where possible.”
Where there are concerns about the way a regulated activity is being managed, there will be times when we need to speak to a more senior person within the organisation. This is more difficult where the registered manager and the person nominated by the organisation to represent them are one and the same.
Care Quality Commission, What is registration?| Stage | From the Registered Manager seat | From the Nominated Individual seat |
|---|---|---|
| The question behind the question | What would you do? | The same live one to one coaching, built around your documents |
| Safeguarding | How you respond to a concern and report it | A Training Lab with flashcard drills on the topics CQC explores |
| Complaints | How you investigate and put things right | Mock interviews in sessions, plus a mock interview simulator that is timed, structured and scored |
| Medicines | How staff are trained and their competence checked | Feedback from your coach, plus a model answer library |
| Governance | How staff are trained and their competence checked | Feedback from your coach, plus a model answer library |
Millicent led Joyce’s preparation
One to one sessions built on Joyce’s own Statement of Purpose, policies and business plan. Mock interviews on safeguarding, medicines, governance, complaints, duty of candour and recruitment, and every topic answered from both seats.
What we built for Joyce
We onboarded Joyce and built the full application pack from the ground up. This is everything that went into it.
The business
- Business plan written for Abingdon and the Oxfordshire market
- Twelve month financial forecast
What CQC reads
- Statement of Purpose on the CQC Part 1 to Part 4 template, meeting Schedule 3 of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009
- New provider application form
- Registered Manager application form
- Additional form for providers of personal care
How care will run
- Safeguarding
- Good governance and quality assurance
- Consent to care and treatment
- Medication management
- Recruitment and safer selection
- Infection prevention and control
- Compliments and complaints
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
- Service User Guide
The policies were written for a domiciliary care service, not lifted from a care home. A home care policy talks about visits, key safes, lone working and people’s own front doors. A care home policy reads very differently.
People
- Training matrix mapped to the Care Certificate and to all four service user bands, including dementia
- CV checked line by line for a full employment history
The home based evidence
- Landlord letter of authority for home based business use
- Nominated Individual declaration of legal occupancy
Why we went through her CV line by line
The Regulated Activities Regulations require “a full employment history, together with a satisfactory written explanation of any gaps in employment.” A gap nobody has explained is easy to miss when you write a CV, and slow to fix once CQC has asked about it.
When the application went quiet
At Breathe, the Registered Manager and the Nominated Individual are different people. That is common in home care, and it means preparing two people for two different conversations with CQC.
Feedback from the Owner
“When my application was at halt with CQC, they reassured me and continued to chase things up on my behalf and that made me feel better.”
She told us they were completely confident they had passed before the result arrived. The result proved them right.
We stayed in contact
We stayed in contact with CQC, kept Joyce informed and kept the application moving. An application that stalls is not a failed application. It is one that needs somebody paying attention to it.
CQC describes its registration assessment as rigorous and says it can take a few months, so a quiet spell is not unusual. It is still hard to sit through on your own.
If your application has gone quiet
- Check the email address you applied with, including junk folders, for any request from CQC you have not answered.
- Keep a simple log of every contact: the date, who you spoke to and what was agreed.
- Keep your evidence current. If a DBS check, insurance certificate or reference is getting old while you wait, be ready to update it.
- Tell CQC before you change your address, your service or who holds which role.
- Keep preparing for the interview. The wait is the best revision time you will get.
The portal for the breadth. Millicent for the depth.
Between sessions, Joyce worked from our CQC Interview Preparation Portal. You choose your role, or both, then your service user bands, and the question bank narrows to your registration. For Joyce that meant adults aged 18 to 65, adults aged 65 and over, dementia and physical disability.
- Registered Manager
- Nominated Individual
- Adults 18 to 65
- Adults 65 and over
- Dementia
- Physical disability
When Joyce sat down with Millicent, she had already met the questions. The sessions turned that into answers she could say out loud, under pressure, about her own service. She walked into the interview prepared, and she passed.
2,300+
Questions across 25 categories, filtered to your roles and bands
Model answers
with practical guidance on what CQC is testing
Audio
so you can revise on the drive to work
Progress
tracked by category, so the topics you keep avoiding show up
What you need is not an office
A lot of people rule themselves out before they start. No office, so I cannot. No team, so I cannot. It is just me, so I cannot.
Joyce registered from home. She holds both roles. Her application went quiet, and a preparation session went wrong the day before her interview. Joyce Authentic Care Ltd is on the CQC register.
What you need is the right documents, the right preparation, and people who stay with you when things go quiet.
CQC registration for new domiciliary care agencies
We build the full application pack around your service and your area, including the home based evidence if you are working from home. We stay with the application after it goes in, and we prepare you for the Fit Person Interview one to one, whether you are one person holding both roles or a full team.
- 50+
- providers registered
- 94%
- first-time pass rate
- 94%
- regulators: CQC, CIW, RQIA and Ofsted
- Live Trustpilot widget here
Could you register a care agency from home?
Six questions, two minutes. A quick self-check, not a CQC assessment.
1Do you have a space at home where records can be locked away and private calls held?
2Do you own the property, or have written permission from your landlord to run a business from it?
3Have you decided who will be the Registered Manager and who will be the Nominated Individual?
4If you will hold both roles, can you say who would look into a complaint about you?
5Is your CV a full employment history, with every gap explained in writing?
6Do you know which groups of people your service will support?
Starting from your kitchen table? Start here.
Tell us where you are starting from: working from home or from an office, holding both roles or building a team, or not sure yet. We will tell you what your application needs to get where Joyce is now.
Learn how we can support your success
Email: hello@caresyncexperts.co.uk
Phone: 0333 577 0877
What Joyce says
Joyce’s review, in full. Including the part we got wrong.
These testimonials showcase customers satisfaction, trust and the value CareSync brings to individuals and businesses
Trustpilot
“I had great experience with Care Sync Experts. They were very professional, caring and dedicated. They delivered the job as per the contract.”
JOYCE
Joyce. New Provider in Town
September 22, 202612:24 PM
Frequently asked questions
Yes. A domiciliary care agency can be registered with CQC at a home address. You will need evidence of legal occupancy, which CQC lists among the supporting documents for homecare agencies, and a base where people’s records can be kept safely and securely. Joyce Authentic Care Ltd registered this way.
If you rent, your evidence of legal occupancy needs to show you are allowed to use the address for the business. For Joyce, that meant written permission from her landlord, which went into her application pack with a declaration of legal occupancy.
Yes, in very small organisations. CQC says it “may be necessary for the same person to be both the registered manager and the nominated individual, but this should be avoided where possible”, because there are times it needs to speak to someone more senior than the manager. Expect to explain how you will hold yourself to account.
CQC’s list for home care agencies includes evidence of legal occupancy, a Service User Guide and a staff training plan, and you must also complete the additional form for personal care providers. Joyce’s pack also included a business plan and forecast, a Statement of Purpose, a full policy pack, and the provider and Registered Manager application forms. Check CQC’s current list before you apply.
The Regulated Activities Regulations require “a full employment history, together with a satisfactory written explanation of any gaps in employment.” Every gap on your CV needs an explanation in writing.
CQC says registration assessment can take a few months. While you wait, check your email for any request you have missed, keep a log of every contact, keep documents such as DBS checks and insurance current, and keep preparing for the interview.
No. You can apply to CQC directly as your own company. Joyce Authentic Care Ltd applied and registered in its own name.
Yes. We build the pack around a sole director structure, including how you will be held to account, and prepare you for the interview from both the Registered Manager and Nominated Individual seats.
Still have questions?
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