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CQC Registration for Supported Living Services

Supported living is the hardest of the adult social care models to register, because two things have to be right at once: the care has to be scoped correctly against the regulations, and the housing has to be genuinely separate from it. Get either wrong and you are either operating unlawfully or running a care home you did not mean to register. This page sets out how CQC decides both, what it costs and what you send.

We have taken supported living providers across England through registration, from scoping the regulated activity and separating the tenancy from the care agreement, to the evidence pack and the registered manager interview.

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Does Your Supported Living Service Have to Register?

It is the nature of the care you provide that decides this, not the building, not the tenancy and not what the service is called. If your staff give physical assistance with any of the tasks the regulations define as personal care, you must register before you start operating. If they do not, you are outside the scope.

Registration required

Physical assistance with any of these

  • Eating or drinking, including the administration of parenteral nutrition
  • Toileting, including in relation to menstruation
  • Washing or bathing
  • Dressing
  • Oral care
  • The care of skin, hair and nails, except nail care given by a chiropodist or podiatrist

Prompting and supervising also count, but only where the person cannot decide for themselves about doing the task without being prompted and supervised. That qualifier is where a lot of applications are scoped wrongly.

Not on its own

What does not trigger registration

  • Housing support on its own, with no personal care tasks
  • Social support such as help with shopping
  • Administering, prompting or supervising medicines, where you provide none of the personal care tasks
  • Support with budgeting, bills, work, education or community activities

The medicines point surprises people. Handling someone's medicines is not by itself a regulated activity. It becomes one the moment you also help with washing, dressing, toileting or the rest of the list above.

A word of caution about staying unregistered

Being outside the scope of registration is a description of your service today, not a business model. Support needs rise, and the first time a member of staff helps someone wash or dress you are carrying on a regulated activity. Doing that without registration is an offence, and local authorities routinely set their own quality and contractual requirements for unregistered providers regardless of what CQC requires. Scope the service against how you expect it to look in a year, not how it looks in week one.

Not sure whether you need to register?

Scoping the regulated activity is the decision everything else rests on. We work it through with you before you commit to an application.

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Housing and Care Have to Be Genuinely Separate

This is what actually distinguishes supported living from a care home, and it is decided on the substance of your arrangements rather than the label on them. CQC's guidance is explicit that for a service to be correctly registered for personal care, there has to be a real separation between the personal care and the accommodation agreements. Get this wrong and you are not running the service you think you are registering.

Two agreements, not one package

The tenancy or occupancy agreement and the care agreement are separate documents. Care is not a condition of keeping the home, and the home is not a condition of accepting the care.

The person can change care provider

If someone is unhappy with the support, they can move to a different provider and stay where they live. If losing the care means losing the home, the separation is not real.

Exclusive possession of the home

The occupancy agreement gives the person genuine rights over their own home, including who comes in and when, rather than a licence that the care provider controls.

Funding routes that stand apart

Housing costs and care costs are commissioned, invoiced and paid separately, rather than bundled into a single fee per person per week.

No single factor settles it

CQC is clear that these indicators are not conclusive on their own and that it considers the whole picture. Holding a tenancy agreement does not by itself prove separation; what matters is the terms of it and how housing and care actually interact in practice. Its Housing with care guidance points providers to the National Development Team for Inclusion's Real Tenancy Test as a way of working through that honestly.

Where this goes wrong

The common pattern is a provider that owns or controls the property, arranges the tenancy, supplies all the care and charges one weekly rate. On paper it is supported living. On the substance it is accommodation provided together with personal care, which is a different regulated activity and a different registration. It is far cheaper to design the separation in at the start than to unpick it during an assessment.

What Registration Costs and What You Have to Send

Supported living sits in CQC's community social care fee category, alongside home care. There is no application fee. Once you are registered you pay an annual fee that scales with the number of people you support, and you send a defined set of documents with the application itself.

The annual fee

£239 per location, plus £54.305 per person

A supported living service operating from one location and supporting 20 people pays £239 plus 20 lots of £54.305, which is £1,325.10 for the year. Nothing is payable to apply. CQC offers payment by direct debit across ten instalments.

Your service type

Extra documents for supported living

  • Business plan and financial forecast
  • Evidence of legal occupancy
  • Service user guides
  • Staff training plan
  • The additional form for personal care providers

These sit on top of the eleven documents on the CQC list that every provider applicant sends, whatever the service.

One you can skip

No financial viability statement

Most new provider applicants have to send one. Supported living services do not, and neither do home care agencies, care homes, NHS trusts or corporate providers. You still send a business plan and financial forecast, which is a different document and is required.

If you support autistic people or people with a learning disability

A large share of supported living falls here, and the requirements are heavier. You send a positive behaviour support policy and a restraint policy on top of everything else, plus the additional form for these services, and CQC expects you to have read its Right support, right care, right culture guidance before you apply. It also offers to discuss a proposed service with you beforehand and give specialist feedback on how likely registration is. Its own advice is to have that conversation early in your planning, before you take investment decisions. Very few providers use it.

Sources: Care Quality Commission, scope of registration for personal care (last updated 14 May 2026), supporting documents for supported living services (15 June 2026) and services for autistic people and people with a learning disability, before you apply (23 March 2026). The fee figures are the ones CQC publishes for community social care on its provider fees payable page. Fees are set by scheme and can change, so check that page and the guidance above before you submit.

Supported Living Policies and Procedures

CQC says a template written for residential care will not work for a home care applicant. The same is true of supported living.

See the policy set

Go Deeper on Supported Living

This page is the overview. Each of these takes one part of supported living and covers it in full.

  • CQC registration for supported living, in full

    The application itself, stage by stage: scoping the regulated activity, the evidence CQC assesses, the registered manager requirements and what happens at interview.

  • Setting up the business

    Costs, the housing side, commissioning routes and the practical sequence of getting a supported living service from an idea to an operating provider.

  • What supported living is, for providers

    The model explained from the provider's side: how it differs from a care home and from extra care housing, and what the tenancy and support arrangements have to look like.

  • Supported accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds

    A different regulator entirely. Supported accommodation for young people is registered and inspected by Ofsted, not CQC, and the standards are not the same.

  • Policies and procedures for supported living

    The policy set an application needs, written for supported living rather than adapted from a residential template, which is a distinction CQC makes explicitly.

  • The supported living setup package

    What we do if you would rather not assemble this yourself: the registration, the document set, the policies and the support through to your first inspection.

Frequently asked questions

Only if your staff provide personal care. Personal care means physical assistance with eating or drinking, toileting, washing or bathing, dressing, oral care, or the care of skin, hair and nails. It also covers prompting and supervising those tasks where the person cannot decide for themselves about doing them without being prompted and supervised. If you provide housing support, social support such as help with shopping, or only handle medicines, and none of those personal care tasks, you are outside the scope of registration. It is the nature of the care that decides this, not the building or the tenancy.
The separation between housing and care. In supported living the person has their own home under a tenancy or occupancy agreement, and the care is a separate arrangement they could in principle change without losing the home. CQC guidance states that for a service to be correctly registered for personal care there must be a real separation between the personal care and the accommodation agreements. Where accommodation and personal care are supplied as a single package under one agreement, that is a different regulated activity, Accommodation for persons who require nursing or personal care, which is how care homes are registered.
There is no fee to apply. Supported living sits in the CQC community social care fee category, so once registered you pay £239 per location per year plus £54.305 for each person you support. A service operating from one location and supporting 20 people pays £1,325.10 a year. CQC offers payment by direct debit across ten instalments.
On top of the eleven documents on the CQC list for every provider applicant, supported living services send a business plan and financial forecast, evidence of legal occupancy, service user guides and a staff training plan, and complete the additional form for personal care providers. Services for autistic people and people with a learning disability also send a positive behaviour support policy and a restraint policy. Supported living services do not have to send a financial viability statement, although most other new providers do.
Yes. A supported living service registered for the regulated activity of personal care is regulated and assessed by CQC in the same way as any other adult social care provider, and the assessment is published. What CQC assesses is the care your staff provide and how the service is led and governed. The housing itself is not what you register, because the regulated activity is personal care rather than accommodation.
Not with CQC. Supported accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds who are looked after or are care leavers is registered and inspected by Ofsted under its own regime. The dividing line is care: supported accommodation provides accommodation and support, and a setting that provides care meets the definition of a children's home and has to register with Ofsted as one instead. CQC registration only enters the picture where a registered children's home also carries on a healthcare regulated activity. If you are planning a service for this age group, work out the Ofsted route first rather than assuming CQC registration is the one you need.
Most placements are commissioned by local authorities and the NHS rather than arranged privately. In practice that means getting onto the relevant framework, dynamic purchasing system or approved provider list for the areas you want to work in, and then bidding for the packages that come through them. Providers who register first and think about commissioning afterwards often sit with an empty service for months, so it is worth understanding the local routes before you apply.
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