Supported living and domiciliary care are usually the same regulated activity in the eyes of CQC. The difference is in how you deliver it, and getting the framing wrong causes real problems at registration.
This is one of the questions we are asked most often by new providers: do I register for supported living or for domiciliary care? The honest answer is that CQC does not offer a registration called either of those things. What CQC registers is the regulated activity, and for both service models that activity is usually personal care.
That does not make the distinction meaningless. Your service model shapes your Statement of Purpose, your location, your policies, the evidence CQC expects, and in supported living it brings housing arrangements into the picture in a way that catches many providers out. This guide explains how the two models differ, what stays the same, and how to describe your service so your application is assessed as the thing you actually intend to run.
The regulated activity is the same
Personal care, as defined in the regulations, means support with activities of daily living such as washing, dressing, toileting and eating, provided to people in the place where they live. A domiciliary care agency provides it through visits to people’s own homes. A supported living service provides it to people who hold their own tenancies, often in shared or clustered housing, frequently with longer or round-the-clock staffing.
Both are registered as personal care. Both are managed from an office location, which is the location you register, because care is delivered in private homes rather than in premises you operate. Neither involves registering the houses people live in, and this is where supported living providers most often go wrong.
Where the two models genuinely differ
| Aspect | Domiciliary care | Supported living |
|---|---|---|
| Typical delivery | Timed visits across a rota of clients | Sustained support in the person’s tenancy, sometimes 24 hours |
| Housing | Not involved in housing at all | Housing usually provided by a separate landlord under a tenancy |
| Who you support | Often older people and people with physical needs | Often people with a learning disability, autistic people or people with mental health needs |
| Key CQC lens | Reliability, safe visits, medicines on visits, lone working | Choice, independence, tenancy rights, and Right support, right care, right culture where relevant |
| Common pitfall | Under-evidenced travel and missed-visit management | Blurring care and housing so the setting looks like an unregistered care home |
The separation of care and housing
The defining feature of genuine supported living is that people hold their own tenancies and receive care under a separate arrangement. The landlord and the care provider should be genuinely independent of one another, and the person should be able to change care provider without losing their home.
Where the same organisation controls both the housing and the care, and residents cannot separate the two, CQC may take the view that the service is really providing accommodation together with care. That is a different regulated activity, the one that applies to care homes, and providing it without the right registration is an offence. If your model involves any overlap between landlord and care provider, take advice before you apply and be transparent about the structure in your application.
If you support autistic people or people with a learning disability
Most supported living registrations are for exactly this group, and CQC assesses them against its statutory guidance, Right support, right care, right culture. Your application needs to show that the service is designed around the people you support rather than around the building or the rota: small-scale settings, genuine choice and control, support planned around individual outcomes, and a workforce trained for the needs of the people you serve. We will look at that guidance in depth in a separate article, but at registration stage the test is simple: can you explain why your model gives people more independence than the alternatives?
How the evidence differs at application stage
Because the regulated activity is the same, providers assume the application evidence is the same. In practice the assessor reads the two models against different risks, and your documents should anticipate that.
For a visiting domiciliary model, the questions cluster around reliability and safety at distance: how visits are scheduled and monitored, what happens when a call is missed, how medicines are supported on short visits, lone working protections for staff, travel time in the rota, and how you take on a new package safely. Your policies and your interview answers need concrete mechanisms, an electronic call monitoring system, an on-call structure, a missed-visit escalation, rather than general assurances.
For supported living, the questions cluster around rights and independence: how the tenancy and the support interact, who holds the front door key and on what basis, how people are involved in choosing staff and housemates, how restrictions are recognised, recorded and reduced, and how support hours flex as needs change. Assessors are alert to institutional habits imported into what should be someone’s own home, house rules, blanket restrictions, staff sleeping arrangements that colonise communal space, and your application is stronger for showing you have thought about them explicitly.
Funding also shapes the evidence. Domiciliary packages are typically commissioned as timed hours, so your financial model and capacity planning revolve around rota fill and travel. Supported living support is usually commissioned per person, often jointly with housing benefit covering the tenancy, so assessors expect you to understand the boundary between what the care contract funds and what the tenancy covers. Providers who blur that boundary in their business plan tend to blur it in practice, and commissioners know it.
Can you register for both models?
Yes, and many providers do. Because both are the regulated activity of personal care, a single registration can cover visiting homecare and supported living, provided your Statement of Purpose describes both, your policies cover both ways of working, and your registered manager can credibly oversee both. What you should not do is register describing one model and quietly deliver the other. Assessors compare what you told CQC at registration with what they find, and the gap becomes a well-led problem.
What to do now
- Write one paragraph describing exactly how your service will work: who you support, where they live, who owns the housing, and what your staff will do. That paragraph decides everything else.
- If housing is involved, map who the landlord is and confirm the tenancy and care arrangements are genuinely separate.
- Draft your Statement of Purpose to describe the model honestly, using CQC’s terminology for the regulated activity.
- Choose policies and procedures written for your model. Supported living needs tenancy, choice and positive behaviour support content that a generic homecare pack does not contain.
- Prepare your registered manager to explain the model at interview, including the housing separation if asked.
How Cura Compliance can help
We register both models every month through our CQC registration support service, and we will tell you plainly which description fits your plans. Our CuraFlow policy libraries include a combined supported living and domiciliary care library written for services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people, so your documents match your model from day one. If you are starting from scratch, our 2026 domiciliary care registration guide walks through the whole application.
Frequently asked questions
Is supported living a regulated activity with CQC?
Not as such. Supported living is a service model. The regulated activity you register for is normally personal care, the same activity a domiciliary care agency registers for. What differs is how you describe and evidence the service.
Do supported living houses need to be registered with CQC?
No. In genuine supported living, people hold tenancies in their own homes and you register the location the care is managed from, usually your office. If the care provider also controls the accommodation, the service may instead need registering in the same way as a care home, so the structure matters.
Can one CQC registration cover domiciliary care and supported living?
Yes, if both are within the regulated activity of personal care and your Statement of Purpose, policies and management arrangements genuinely cover both models.
What is the difference between supported living and a care home?
In a care home the provider supplies accommodation and care together and registers for that combined activity. In supported living the person rents their home from a landlord and receives care under a separate arrangement, and the care provider registers for personal care only.
Does Right support, right care, right culture apply to my registration?
If your service will support autistic people or people with a learning disability, yes. CQC applies that statutory guidance when assessing applications, and your model, staffing and evidence should be built with it in mind.
Sources
- The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Schedule 1 (legislation.gov.uk, accessed September 2026)
- CQC guidance on registration and the scope of registration (cqc.org.uk, accessed September 2026)
- CQC: services for autistic people and people with a learning disability (cqc.org.uk, accessed September 2026)