Ratings for care home and domiciliary support services

From April 2025 all care home and domiciliary support services will receive published ratings.

In preparation for regulations for ratings under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act, we implemented a system of silent ratings for care homes and domiciliary support services in June 2023.

All services inspected after 1 April 2025 will receive ratings and these will be publicly available. There will also be a legal requirement for services to display their ratings on their websites and / or public spaces.

Evaluation of silent ratings pilot for care homes and domiciliary support services

In order for us to get an understanding of what worked well and what areas needed further development during the silent ratings phase, we asked an independent company, Practice Solutions Ltd (External link) to evaluate our approach.

The Practice Solutions team sought the views of a wide range of people involved in both inspection and social care, including providers and carers of those who use services, as well as CIW inspectors.

You can view the evaluation report here.

Our action plan – how we will implement published ratings

In preparation for the publication of ratings and in response to the independent evaluation of the silent ratings pilot, we have developed an action plan which outlines the steps we will take over the coming weeks and months.

You can view our action plan here.

Welsh Government consultation: Inspection ratings regulations

The Welsh Government is seeking your views on draft regulations which provide for a system of published inspection ratings for care home services and domiciliary support services from April 2025.

The Regulated Services (Inspection Ratings) (Wales) Regulations 2025 include requirements for service providers to publish their inspection ratings on their website and in service premises (with some exceptions). The regulations also contain details of the appeals procedure, offences, and penalty notices.

The consultation opens on Monday 29 July and will close at midnight on Monday 14 October 2024. The consultation document, response form and easy read versions of these documents, are available on the Welsh Government website