Your CQC Registration Has a 12-Month Deadline — and Most New Providers Find Out Too Late
What every newly registered care provider should do the day their CQC certificate arrives.
At Cura Compliance UK, there is one phone call we receive more than any other. It usually comes about eleven months after a provider registers with the CQC, and it always sounds the same:
“CQC has told me to close my company. What can I do?”
We hate having to give the honest answer: at that stage, very little — unless you already have a client who is about to start with you.
If you have just received your CQC registration, this article is for you. Please read it now, not in ten months’ time. The steps below are simple. But timing is everything.
The rule nobody explains at registration
Here is the part that catches so many new providers by surprise.
Your CQC registration is not a certificate to frame on the wall and come back to “when the time is right.” The law expects you to actually deliver the regulated activity you registered for — for example, personal care.
If you do not provide that regulated activity for a continuous period of 12 months, the CQC has the power to cancel your registration. This power comes from Section 17(1)(e) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and Regulation 6(1)(c) of the CQC (Registration) Regulations 2009.
The process is not instant, but it moves faster than you might think:
- The CQC issues a Notice of Proposal to cancel your registration.
- You have 28 days to send written representations explaining why it should not go ahead.
- If that does not work, you receive a Notice of Decision, with a further 28 days to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
And here is the sting in the tail. To have any real chance of keeping your registration, you must show the CQC that you are already delivering care — or that you will be very soon. A signed care package with a start date. A live tender application. Something real.
In other words: the moment you need to prove you have a client is exactly the moment it is hardest to find one. That is why waiting is so dangerous.
Why one client changes everything
A newly registered provider with no clients is, in practice, a dormant company. Dormant providers are exactly who the CQC looks at when it reviews who is genuinely operating.
Winning your first client is about far more than income. It lifts you out of dormancy. It proves your service is real. It gives you evidence, a start date, and a story to tell — to the CQC, to local authorities, and to the next family who enquires.
You do not need ten clients to be safe. You need one. But you need to start working towards that one on day one — not in month eleven.
Start the day your certificate lands: your first-client action plan
The good news is that you have more routes to that first client than you might realise. Here is where to focus straight away.
1. Get listed where families are already searching
When a family needs home care, they search online. Make sure they find you. Create and fully complete your free provider profiles on the main UK care-finder platforms:
- Lottie — a fast-growing marketplace that helps families compare home care and connects them directly with providers.
- Autumna — the UK’s largest later-life care directory, with tens of thousands of providers listed and no referral fees.
- Bark — a broad lead marketplace where people post what they need and providers respond.
A half-finished profile gets ignored. Add your service details, the areas you cover, your contact number — and reply to every enquiry quickly. The first provider to respond usually wins the conversation.
2. Switch on a Google Ads campaign
A directory listing is passive. Google Ads puts you at the top of the results at the exact moment someone types “home care near me.” Even a modest daily budget, targeted to your local area, can bring your first private enquiries within days. It is one of the fastest ways to be seen while everything else is still warming up.
3. Market face to face — this still works
Care is a relationship business. The referrals that convert best often come from real people who trust you:
- GP surgeries and community nurses
- Hospital discharge teams and social workers
- Local community groups, churches and support networks
Introduce yourself. Leave your details. Explain clearly what you do and where you cover. A single relationship with a discharge team can bring you a steady flow of clients.
4. Get on the tender portals and the DPS — early
This is the big one. And it is the step providers leave far too late.
Councils buy most of their home care through tender portals and Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) — increasingly called Dynamic Markets under the Procurement Act 2023. Think of a DPS as an approved supplier list. You cannot win council work unless your name is on that list first.
The important thing to understand is that these lists are open. You can apply to join at any time — but getting approved takes work and time. And when a council has a care package to award, it only invites providers who are already on the system to bid. If you are not on it, you do not even receive the invitation.
So the goal is simple: apply to get onto the DPS in as many local authorities as you can, as soon as possible. Register on the e-tendering portals councils use — such as Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, ProContract, In-Tend and The Chest — so that opportunities reach you the day they open.
“Don’t wait until the last minute to register for tenders — because by then, it’s too late”
We have put this in bold because it is the single most expensive mistake we see.
Here is the maths of waiting. Tenders open and close on fixed dates. DPS applications take time to be reviewed and approved. Mini-competitions only go to suppliers already on the list. Add all of that up, and a provider who starts thinking about tenders in month eleven has almost no chance of onboarding a client before the 12-month deadline.
A provider who applied in month one has spent the year quietly getting approved, getting invited, and getting ready to win work. When the package comes up, they are already in the room. That is the difference between an active company and a cancelled registration.
Where Cura Compliance UK comes in
We are compliance and care-market specialists, and this is exactly the situation we help providers avoid every week. We can:
- Book you a consultation to build a clear, personalised plan for your first 12 months.
- Handle your tender applications — from getting you onto the right DPS and dynamic markets to writing bids that actually win. (See our Winning Care Tenders and Contracts service.)
- Set up your marketing — website, care-finder listings and Google Ads — so private enquiries start coming in. (See Website and Marketing.)
The providers who succeed are the ones who contact us early. The ones who struggle are the ones who wait until the CQC letter arrives.
Please do not wait until there is nothing left to do. Get in touch the day your registration comes through, and let us help you turn that certificate into a working, growing care service.
Book your free consultation: curacompliance.co.uk/cqc-registration-free-consultation Call: 07470 390526 Email: info@curacompliance.co.uk
Published by the Cura Compliance UK Content Team.