Guide
CQC registration interview questions for domiciliary care managers
If you’re applying to be the registered manager of a new domiciliary care (home care) agency, CQC may interview you before it decides on the application. There is no official question list. What CQC does publish is a clear account of what it wants a registered manager to show, and that is the best guide to what the interview will cover.
This article sets out what CQC says it checks, then turns each point into practice questions. Every point links to the CQC or legislation page it comes from, so you can read the source yourself.
When the interview happens
CQC checks homecare applications in two stages. Stage one is a check that your forms, statement of purpose and supporting documents are complete and meet CQC’s requirements. If they don’t, CQC says it will reject the application and email you to explain why.
Only at stage two, the assessment, does CQC say it may “interview you and your registered manager by telephone, online or face-to-face” and visit your premises. CQC’s register as a provider page calls this a Fit Person Interview, and lists a Nominated Individual Discussion separately. CQC’s manager registration page says it will contact you to arrange the interview.
What CQC says it is checking
The legal test is in Regulation 7 of the 2014 Regulations. A registered manager has to be of good character, have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience for the role, be able to do the job because of their health, and supply the information listed in Schedule 3. CQC’s guidance on Regulation 7 says the registered manager “should demonstrate that they have appropriate knowledge of applicable legislation”, naming Part 3 of the 2014 Regulations, which is where the fundamental standards sit.
CQC’s homecare guidance says you and your managers must understand and have experience with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, including Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. It also says: “We want to see evidence of this when we process your application, and when we interview you or your managers.”
The manager registration page says applicants must have “proven management experience” and that “recent experience managing a relevant regulated service is highly desirable”. It adds that for some services you will need to show you can handle complaints, mental capacity assessments, safeguarding issues and medication errors.
Practice questions, topic by topic
These are not CQC’s questions. They are practice prompts that follow the topics CQC itself names. Answering them out loud, with examples from your own work, is a fair test of whether you can talk about each area in detail.
1. Your experience as a manager
CQC asks for evidence of your ability to manage the needs of every service user group and age range in the provider’s application (source).
- Tell us about a service you have managed. How many staff, and what kind of care?
- You’ve said you’ll support people living with dementia. What experience do you have of managing that care?
2. The law you’ll work under
- What does the Health and Social Care Act 2008 mean for how this agency runs?
- What are the five principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and how would staff use them during a visit?
- How do Deprivation of Liberty rules apply to people receiving care in their own homes?
CQC’s consent policy guidance asks how you’ll apply the five principles and how you’ll assess capacity, including who does it, when and why. It’s a fair bet the interview covers the same ground.
3. Complaints
CQC’s complaints policy page asks how people can complain, the stages and timescales for handling a complaint, how you’ll learn from complaints, and how complaints about the registered manager are handled, especially where the registered manager and nominated individual are the same person.
- A family member rings to complain that calls are late. Talk us through what happens next.
- Who handles a complaint about you?
- How will you use complaints to improve the service?
4. Safeguarding
CQC’s safeguarding policy page asks for the name and role of your safeguarding lead, a clear reporting route, how allegations against managers are handled, and contact details for the local authority safeguarding team in the area where you’ll provide care.
- A care worker tells you they think a client’s son is taking money. What do you do, in order?
- Who is your local authority safeguarding team, and how do you contact them out of hours?
- How would you recognise restraint in a home care setting?
5. Medicines and medication errors
CQC’s medicines policy page asks how you’ll handle medication errors and omissions, refusals, “as required” (PRN) medicines, staff competence, and records. For home care it also asks how you’ll agree medicine storage with people in their homes, and your approach to STOMP and STAMP where applicable.
- A care worker finds that a dose was missed yesterday. What happens now?
- How will you check a care worker is competent to give medicines?
- What is STOMP, and when would it apply to your service?
6. Your own policies
CQC publishes two example applications. In the refused one, the provider had bought policies online but “could not tell us about their content or how they applied to the agency”. In the registered one, the applicant had bought policies, “reviewed and adapted these to the service and written others himself”, and “could tell us in detail how they applied to the running of the service”.
- Pick any policy in your pack. How does it work in practice in your agency?
- Where did your policies come from, and what did you change?
7. Staff, training and recruitment
CQC’s staff training plan page asks what your induction includes, the training for each role, specialist training, the training provider for each topic, and refresher timings. The same CQC example page says: “We will not register services where key people plan to get the training and experience they need after they are registered.”
- How will a new care worker be inducted before their first visit?
- Which checks happen before someone starts work?
8. Governance and quality
CQC’s governance page asks how you’ll assess, monitor and improve quality, details of your audits, how you manage and learn from risks, and how you’ll seek and act on feedback.
- How will you know if call times are slipping?
- What will you audit, and what happens with the results?
What else CQC asks of you as a manager
CQC’s manager registration page also lists the checks around the interview: your full work history from age 16 with any gaps over four weeks explained, an enhanced DBS certificate countersigned by CQC and issued in the past 12 months, and copies of your qualifications. For home care, it says a Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management or equivalent “would strengthen your application”. It also says you could be fined up to £2,500 for false or misleading information.
FAQ
Does CQC publish its interview questions? Not as a list that we could find. CQC publishes what it wants a registered manager to show, which is what this article is built from.
Is the interview in person? CQC says it may be by telephone, online or face-to-face (source).
Will the nominated individual be interviewed too? CQC’s register as a provider page lists a Nominated Individual Discussion as a separate step it may arrange.
What if my application is refused after the interview? CQC’s outcome page says it first sends a notice of proposal, and you have 28 calendar days to make representations. You can appeal a final decision to the First-tier Tribunal.
Where OrCore fits
The questions that come up most in CQC’s guidance are about how your policies work in real life. The OrCore policy pack interview asks fixed questions about how your agency will run, then turns your answers into draft policies that you check, edit and sign off. Going through it is also a structured way to think through the topics above. Start the policy pack interview.
About us. OrCore Compliance is independent of CQC. We are not part of CQC and CQC has not endorsed us. We’re also new, so we don’t have a track record or success figures to show you yet, and we won’t invent any. We use AI to help draft and check our master policy templates. Your answers fill them in, and you confirm every policy matches how your service really works before you use it. The interview on our site uses fixed questions and fixed answers written by the OrCore team. No AI reads or replies to what you type there.
This article gives general information from CQC and UK law, with a link for each point. It isn’t advice about your own service: CQC makes every registration decision, and for advice on your situation speak to your own specialist. OrCore offers registration support only, with no guarantee of outcome.