Legislation

The way in which adult social care providers are regulated is fundamentally changing. Find out more about the new regulation of care providers.


When running a care service there are certain things you have to do by law. These are explained in the relevant Acts and regulations. Find out about:

You must agree to the terms and conditions before using the documents below. The legislation should be used as guidance only, and you should seek legal advice about the current position before you take any action that relies on this information.

Acts

Care Standards Act 2000

Health and Social Care Act 2008

Download the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (PDF, 987KB, opens in new window)

Regulations

The Acts are followed by lots of regulations which go into more detail. There are regulations that apply to every type of service and others that are service specific.

New regulations made under the Health and Social Care Act 2008

Service-specific regulations

Regulations that apply to all service types

The link below goes to another government website. We cannot guarantee the information is up to date.

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National minimum standards

Download the national minimum standards for each service from the Department of Health website:

Care homes for older people (65 +) (PDF, opens in a new window)

Care homes for adults (18 to 65) (PDF, opens in a new window)

Domiciliary care (home care) (PDF, opens in a new window)

Nurses agencies (PDF, opens in a new window)

Adult placement schemes (PDF, opens in a new window)

Please note: The national minimum standards as they appear on the links above include the regulations dealing with each service in the way that they were first published. All of the regulations have been amended since that time, and so this version may be inaccurate.

How to order copies of NMS

You can get printed copies from a company called TSO by calling them on 0870 600 5522.

Visit the TSO online bookshop (opens in new window)

Guidance logs

Guidance logs are used by our inspectors to check how well services are meeting the national minimum standards. You can use them to help clarify how the standards should be interpreted.

Guidance log: Care homes for older people (PDF, 562KB, open is new window)

Guidance log: Domiciliary care (PDF,421 KB, opens in new window)

Guidance log: Adult placement schemes (PDF, 169 KB, opens in new window)

Guidance log: Care Homes for adults (PDF, 665KB, opens in new window)

Guidance log: Nurses Agency (PDF, 167KB, open on new window)

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Key lines of regulatory assessment

To help our inspectors make decisions about the quality of a care service, we have written a set of guidelines called the Key lines of regulatory assessment (KLORA):

KLORA for care homes (DOC, 100 KB, opens in new window)

KLORA for domiciliary care agencies (DOC, 191 KB, opens in new window)

KLORA for nurses agencies (DOC, 173 KB, opens in new window)

KLORA for adult placement schemes (DOC, 194 KB, opens in new window)

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Terms and conditions for using legislation listed on our website

The legislation listed on our website is reproduced by permission of Reed Elsevier Limited (UK) trading as LexisNexis Butterworths.

We provide the legislation to users of this site subject to their copyright terms, and subject to its use only for research purposes.

Users are not permitted to download the legislation for storage or manipulation at any other location, or to use the legislation in any way that will distort or alter its original intention or meaning.

The legislation is provided for reference only, and is not intended as a substitute for the exercise of professional judgement or legal advice.

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