How we compare care homes

Some care home pages on this site carry a short box headed "How this home compares nearby". It counts how many care homes close by hold a higher, the same, or a lower overall CQC rating, and how many CQC has inspected more recently. This page explains exactly how those counts are worked out, so you can judge how much weight to give them.

Which homes we compare

A care home is compared only if all of the following are true.

• It is a care home for older people, as recorded by CQC.
• It is open, and still listed by CQC.
• It is the main registration for the home. Where two companies are jointly registered at one address, only the primary registration is compared, so the same building is never counted twice.
• CQC has given it an overall rating. Homes shown as "Not yet rated", and homes with no rating at all, are not compared.
• We hold a map location for it, which is what we measure distance from.

Services registered for learning disabilities are not compared yet. They are inspected against different expectations, and counting them alongside older people's homes would not be a fair comparison. We would rather show nothing than show a comparison we cannot stand behind.

Scotland care homes are not compared at all. They are graded by the Care Inspectorate on a different scale, which cannot be set against a CQC rating.

How we pick the neighbours

Every home is compared against its own neighbours, not against a town, a council area or a national list. The neighbours are other care homes that meet the conditions above, measured as a straight line distance from the home.

• If there are at least 5 such homes within 5 miles, we compare against the homes within 5 miles.
• If there are fewer than 5 within 5 miles, we widen the search to 10 miles and compare against the homes within 10 miles. The box always says which distance it used.
• If there are still fewer than 3 neighbours within 10 miles, the home is not compared and no box appears. Counts drawn from one or two neighbours would be noise.

Because each home has its own circle of neighbours, two homes a few miles apart are compared against different sets of homes. The counts are never a league table for an area.

What the counts mean

The first line uses the overall CQC rating only: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate. A neighbour is counted as rated higher, the same, or lower than this home on that single grade. We do not fold in the five key question ratings, how big the home is, what it charges, or anything a provider has told us. The home itself is not included in its own counts.

The second line is a separate point about timing, not quality. It counts how many of those same neighbours CQC has inspected more recently than the home you are reading about. A neighbour is only counted if CQC has recorded an inspection date for it. The line is left off entirely for a home with no recorded inspection date of its own, since there would be nothing to compare against.

A newer inspection is not a better inspection. It means the published rating reflects a more recent visit, which is worth knowing when a rating is several years old.

What this does not tell you

It does not tell you which home is best. Most care homes in England are rated Good, so a great many homes have no higher-rated neighbour at all. That is not a mark of distinction, it means the home shares the most common rating locally. We deliberately do not publish a local ranking or a score: when we worked one out, most homes separated only by when CQC last visited, which would have told you about inspection scheduling rather than about care.

A CQC rating is a snapshot of one inspection. It does not capture how a home feels, whether the staff suit your relative, or how it handles the specific needs you are asking about. Please read the full CQC report for any home on your shortlist, and visit in person before deciding. Our guide to CQC ratings explains what each grade covers, and our guide to choosing a care home covers what to look for on a visit.

Where the data comes from, and how current it is

Ratings, inspection dates, registration details and locations all come from the Care Quality Commission, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We refresh the CQC data and rebuild every comparison nightly, so a rating change or a new inspection works through within a day. The box on each care home page shows the date its counts were last worked out.

If you think a comparison on this site is wrong, please tell us and we will check it against the CQC record.