GUIDE
The 34 CQC Quality Statements explained
The CQC assesses every service against 34 Quality Statements under five key questions. Here is what they are, how they work, and what is changing in 2026.
Last reviewed: 05 June 2026
The Single Assessment Framework
Since late 2023, the CQC has assessed every service it regulates against one approach: the Single Assessment Framework. It replaced the old system of Key Lines of Enquiry, the KLOEs, which used more than three hundred prompts, with a simpler structure built on 34 Quality Statements. The framework keeps the CQC’s five key questions and its four-point rating scale, but changes how providers are assessed against them. For anyone registering a care service today, this is the framework you prepare against.
The five key questions
Underneath everything sit the five key questions the CQC has always asked, and still asks. Is the service safe? Is it effective? Is it caring? Is it responsive to people’s needs? And is it well-led? Every Quality Statement maps to one of these five. When the CQC assesses you, it gathers evidence against the relevant Quality Statements, scores them, and combines those scores into a rating for each key question, and an overall rating: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Inadequate.
Safe, effective, caring, responsive, well-led.
Replacing 300+ KLOE prompts.
How the CQC gathers its evidence.
What the Quality Statements are
The 34 Quality Statements are written as ‘we statements’, short commitments phrased from the provider’s point of view, for example a statement about how the service keeps people safe from abuse, or how it involves people in their own care. They are deliberately written this way to make the CQC’s expectations clearer than the old KLOE prompts did. Each statement links back to the underlying regulations, the Fundamental Standards, so meeting them is not optional polish; it is how you demonstrate you meet the law. Some statements matter more in some service types than others, but the framework is one single set across all the services the CQC regulates.
The six evidence categories
For each Quality Statement, the CQC gathers evidence from up to six categories: people’s experiences of the service, feedback from staff and leaders, feedback from partners, direct observation, the processes you have in place, and the outcomes you achieve. The point of organising evidence this way is consistency, the CQC is meant to weigh the same kinds of evidence for the same statements across different services. For a new registration, the evidence is necessarily different from an operating service, you are showing what you will do, through your policies, your Statement of Purpose, and your readiness, rather than a track record.
What is changing in 2026
The framework is under review, and it is worth being clear about what that does and does not mean. The CQC has proposed changes, including sector-specific versions of the framework and a different way of turning Quality Statement scores into ratings. But as of 2026, those changes are not yet in force. The 34 Quality Statements remain active, inspections still reference them, and ratings are still calculated using them. There is no alternative framework running in parallel. The honest position is this: prepare against what exists now, the 34 Quality Statements, and watch for the CQC’s announcements on the sector-specific guidance. Anyone telling you to wait for a reset is giving you a reason to delay; the current framework is the one that governs your registration today.
Built around the current framework
We build your documentation and your application mapped to the 34 Quality Statements and the five key questions, the current framework, not outdated KLOE language, as part of your CQC registration.
Quality Statements questions, answered
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