Guide · Infection prevention & control

The CQC compliance guide for domiciliary care providers

What inspectors actually ask for on infection prevention and control, the six steps that produce that evidence as a by-product of daily work, three worked provider case studies, and a free checklist you can print and work through today.

Free, no sign-up required. Eight sections, 40 checks, printable.

Who this guide is for

Registered managers, nominated individuals and compliance leads at UK domiciliary care agencies — whether you are preparing for a first inspection or tightening evidence after a finding.

What it covers

Infection prevention and control specifically: policy and governance, PPE supply and use, training, audits, corrective actions and the evidence pack you hand over.

What it is not

It is not CQC guidance and not legal advice. Always check the current CQC single assessment framework and your own policies before acting.

Six steps to inspection-ready IPC evidence

Each step maps to something an inspector can ask you to produce. Done in order, the evidence accumulates on its own instead of being assembled the week before.

Step 01

Set your IPC policy and named lead

Inspectors start with the paperwork that governs everything else: a dated infection prevention and control policy reviewed within the last twelve months, a named IPC lead, and evidence that staff have read the current version. If your policy still references pandemic-era guidance without review, expect a finding.

Do this

Date and version every policy revision
Record staff acknowledgement per person, not per team
Put IPC on the standing agenda for management meetings

Step 02

Control PPE stock and record deliveries

Safe care and treatment means supplies were genuinely available. That is a stock question: what you hold, what threshold triggers reordering, and what arrived when. A spreadsheet updated monthly cannot show that a care worker had gloves on a Tuesday evening in March.

Do this

Set minimum thresholds per item and alert on them
Log every delivery with date, quantity and supplier
Name a contingency supplier for shortages

Step 03

Record PPE use at every visit

The strongest IPC evidence in domiciliary care is routine and boring: a per-visit record of what was used, by whom. Captured at the doorstep it takes seconds; reconstructed later it is worthless. This is also what turns audit scores from opinion into measurement.

Do this

Capture usage on the care worker's own phone
Keep it under ten seconds or it will not be done
Reconcile usage against stock movements monthly

Step 04

Run scored IPC audits on a schedule

Quarterly is the practical minimum, and the score matters less than the trend. An audit that always returns 100% tells an inspector the audit is not searching. Cover hand hygiene, PPE use, waste handling, equipment cleaning and staff competence, and include every branch you operate.

Do this

Use a consistent template so scores compare over time
Include observed practice, not just self-report
Share results with the team that was audited

Step 05

Close corrective actions with owners and dates

This is where most providers lose marks. Spotting a gap is neutral; an open gap with no owner is a governance failure. Each shortfall needs a named owner, a due date, and a record of what actually changed. Repeat findings should trigger a root-cause review rather than a repeat action.

Do this

One action, one owner, one due date
Escalate overdue actions to the registered manager
Record the change made, not just 'completed'

Step 06

Export an evidence pack before inspection

When the call comes you want one pack, not eleven folders: usage records, audit scores and trends, completed corrective actions, and an audit trail showing who entered what and when. If assembling that takes a week, your system is the problem — not your practice.

Do this

Be able to export any date range on demand
Include the audit trail, not only the totals
Review who has access to records each quarter

IPC audits: what to audit and how often

An infection prevention and control audit is a structured, scored check of practice against your own policy. It answers one question an inspector will always ask: "How do you know your IPC policy is followed in practice?" A policy alone cannot answer that. A dated run of scored audits can.

Cadence. Quarterly per branch is the practical minimum for domiciliary care. Add an extra audit after any outbreak, any IPC-related complaint, or a change of PPE supplier. More frequent light checks (ten questions, point-of-care) are better than a huge annual audit nobody reads.

Scope. A defensible template covers the same ground every time so scores compare over time: hand hygiene, PPE selection and use, waste handling, equipment cleaning, staff training and competence, and stock control. Include observed practice — watch one care worker on one visit — not just self-reported answers.

Scoring. Score each item met or not met and total it as a percentage. Two warnings: a template that always returns 100% is not searching hard enough, and a score with no comments column forces the auditor to record why something failed, which is what corrective actions hang off.

Common findings. Hand hygiene moments missed between tasks, gloves worn when not indicated, stock levels invisible to the office, and training records expired. All four are cheap to evidence once capture is routine — which is what the checklist download below walks through.

Corrective actions: from finding to closure

Inspectors do not expect zero findings. They expect a closed loop: a finding becomes an action, the action has an owner and a due date, and closure records what actually changed. An open finding with no owner reads as a governance failure even when the underlying practice is fine.

The lifecycle. Every corrective action moves through three states: open (raised from an audit finding), in progress (owner assigned, work under way), and complete (change made and recorded). Anything past its due date is overdue and should escalate automatically to the registered manager.

Write actions that can be closed. "Improve hand hygiene" cannot be closed — "Retrain the east locality team on the five moments and spot-check three visits" can. One action, one owner, one due date, and a closure note describing the change, not just the word "done".

Repeat findings. If the same shortfall appears in consecutive audits, the previous actions treated a symptom. Trigger a root-cause review: is it training, rota design, supply, or supervision? A repeat finding with a documented root-cause conversation is far stronger evidence than a fourth identical action.

Trend, not snapshot. Over a year, the numbers inspectors value are the percentage of actions closed on time and the direction of audit scores. Both come free once actions are tracked centrally rather than in the footer of each audit document.

CQC report templates: the three documents to have ready

You do not need a drawer of bespoke reports. Three documents, kept current, answer almost every IPC evidence request an inspector makes.

1. The audit report. One per completed audit: date, auditor, service, the scored template, overall percentage, and every item marked not met with its linked corrective action. This is your per-audit record and the unit your trend analysis is built from.

2. The corrective action log. A single running list across all audits: finding, owner, due date, status, and closure note. Sort it by due date and the overdue items manage themselves; filter it by status and it answers "show me everything currently open" in seconds.

3. The inspection evidence pack. Produced on demand: service name and CQC registration number, a readiness summary, recent audit scores, all open and overdue actions, and the underlying records — per-visit PPE use, deliveries, training dates and the audit trail showing who entered what. If assembling this takes more than a few minutes, the fix is the system, not the practice.

The checklist below doubles as a template for the pack's contents page. In PPE Flo, the audit report and evidence pack are generated automatically from the audits and actions your team records day to day — the portal builds the printable CQC report for you.

Case studies: three providers, three gaps

Anonymised, composite scenarios drawn from the situations domiciliary care providers describe most often. Details are illustrative, not records of named customers.

Case study 1

Domiciliary care agency, 34 care workers, two localities

The gap: Paper PPE sheets were collected weekly and keyed into a spreadsheet. At a routine inspection the manager could show monthly totals but not whether PPE was available on any specific visit, and three months of sheets were missing.
What changed: Usage capture moved to the care worker's phone at the point of care, with delivery logging in the office and low-stock thresholds set per item.
The outcome: Per-visit records became continuous rather than reconstructed, low-stock alerts removed the mid-round shortages the team had treated as normal, and the evidence request at the next review was answered from a single exported report.

Case study 2

Registered provider, single branch, 12 staff, first inspection pending

The gap: IPC audits were run in a Word template and scored by hand. Findings were listed at the bottom of each audit with no owner, and the same hand hygiene shortfall appeared in three consecutive audits.
What changed: Audits moved to a scored template, and every shortfall was converted into a corrective action with a named owner, a due date and a recorded outcome. Repeat findings triggered a root-cause conversation instead of a fourth identical action.
The outcome: The repeat finding closed after a change to the visit rota that had been causing it, and the audit history showed a visible improvement trend — the thing inspectors ask for under Well-led.

Case study 3

Multi-branch provider, 90+ staff across four localities

The gap: Each branch audited in its own format. Head office could not compare branches or tell which localities were behind on actions, and governance meetings relied on whatever each manager brought.
What changed: A single audit template was applied across branches, with role-based access so managers saw their own locality and head office saw all of it, plus an overdue-action view.
The outcome: Governance meetings started from the same numbers for every branch, overdue actions became visible before they aged, and the weakest locality was identified from the data rather than from complaints.

Download the CQC IPC checklist

Forty checks across eight sections, with a notes column for recording where each piece of evidence lives. Print it, work through it with your IPC lead, and treat anything you cannot evidence as a corrective action.

Governance and policy
PPE supply and stock control
PPE use at the point of care
Training and competence
Audit and monitoring
Corrective actions
Incidents and outbreaks
Evidence ready for inspection

Produce this evidence automatically

PPE Flo covers five of the eight checklist sections as a by-product of daily work: stock and deliveries, per-visit PPE use, scored IPC audits, tracked corrective actions and an exportable evidence pack. 14-day free trial, no card required.