Methodology & Data Sources

Last reviewed 13 October 2026 by the AskBart editorial team.

Machine-readable summary: /llms.txt; read-only API: /api/public.

Care quality: the CQC register

Ratings, inspection dates, registration status and each home’s past ratings come from the Care Quality Commission’s public register (its Syndication API), matched to each listing by its CQC location ID. We show the overall rating and the five key-question ratings exactly as the CQC publishes them. We never turn a CQC rating into review stars.

Every night we ask the CQC which locations changed and re-read those homes, so a new rating reaches the home’s page, its town and care-type pages within a day, with a “Rating updated” note and the previous rating. Each month’s changes are listed in CQC rating changes, by the date of the CQC report.

National comparisons (“against 79% nationally”) use CQC State of Care (2024/25). See how we present care home ratings.

Where homes are placed

Homes are listed under the town and council they’re in, worked out from each home’s postcode with ONS geography (via postcodes.io): the council that runs adult social care for that address, and the ONS built-up area as its town. A town page lists the homes within 3 miles of the town centre, widening to 10 miles only when there are none that close, and always every home filed under that town, however far out (some addresses use a post town miles away). An area page lists every home beneath it. Care-type pages (for example dementia or nursing) list the homes on the matching location page whose recorded care types or CQC specialisms include that type of care.

We only ask search engines to index a location or care-type page when it lists at least three homes, so a page about one or two homes is still there for visitors but isn’t presented as a destination in its own right.

Comparisons we calculate

Rank among nearby homes: by CQC rating, then by number of beds, among homes of the same kind within 5 miles.
Time since inspection: compared with the median for homes within 5 miles.
Rating trend: the current CQC rating against the one before it.
Share rated Good or Outstanding: of the homes with one of the four CQC ratings; homes awaiting a first rating are counted separately.

Area information

Crime: police-recorded crime from the Police.uk data API in England and Wales. Police.uk doesn’t cover Scotland, so Scottish towns use Police Scotland’s recorded crime for the council wards they sit in over the latest 12 months (provisional management information, not official statistics), per head of the wards’ population from National Records of Scotland.
Flood risk: the Environment Agency’s real-time flood-monitoring API (England), Natural Resources Wales’s flood warning and alert areas (Wales) and SEPA’s flood maps (Scotland).
Local amenities: OpenStreetMap, via the Overpass API.
House prices: HM Land Registry’s UK House Price Index and Price Paid data.
Population: ONS small-area population estimates (2021), via Nomis (England and Wales); National Records of Scotland settlement, locality and council-area estimates, via statistics.gov.scot (Scotland).
Nearest hospital and GP: NHS reference data, with GP practices’ CQC ratings.
Food hygiene: the Food Standards Agency’s ratings.
Council care fee rates: the rates councils publish for the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (GOV.UK).

Fees

Fees are the prices homes and operators publish, recorded with the date we captured them. They are a guide: what a home charges depends on the room and the care needed, so always ask for a written quote.

Keeping it current, and fixing mistakes