What does the Care Inspectorate look at when it arrives unannounced?

Why does the Care Inspectorate not warn us first?

The Care Inspectorate's guidance on how it inspects regulated services, published in August 2026, is direct about this. Its inspections are unannounced because it wants to see how services operate on a day to day basis and the outcomes people experience. In exceptional circumstances, where short notice is the only appropriate option, a service will typically get less than 24 hours' notice.

Inspectors also plan visits at different times, including early mornings, evenings, weekends and holiday periods. The guidance asks services to make sure their teams feel comfortable with inspectors arriving at those times, including when managers are not present.

That last line is the one I would pin to the office wall. If your service only looks right when you are in the building, an unannounced visit will find that out.

What do inspectors check first?

Before anyone arrives, the inspector reviews what the Care Inspectorate already holds about you: your annual return, notification history, complaints, enforcement information and evaluation history. That shapes the type and timing of the inspection.

On the day, the guidance says inspectors prioritise speaking with people using the service, before moving into discussions with the management team. They will usually ask for your most recent service improvement or development plan, and ask what you have achieved since the last inspection.

Alongside this, inspectors look at the core assurances. These are key areas such as protecting people and recruitment, chosen because they are early indicators of concern. They are assessed at every inspection except follow up inspections. If something worries the inspector under a core assurance, the scope can widen to take in a quality indicator that was not part of the plan.

How do inspectors gather their evidence?

The guidance says inspectors will always triangulate evidence. In plain English, they look for the same picture from three directions.

How inspectors gather evidence	What it looks like on the day	A check to run this week
Observation	Watching how staff support people and how they talk with them	Sit in the lounge at teatime and write down what you see
Talking with people	People using the service, families and carers, staff, and visiting professionals the inspector contacts	Ask a carer on a weekend shift how they would raise a concern
Sampling documentation	Personal plans, recruitment records, incident and medication records, quality assurance records	Ask the senior on shift to find three of these without phoning you

The documentation point matters more than people expect. The guidance says that if a service cannot provide information that was requested, the inspection proceeds on the basis that the information does not exist. A personal plan that is accurate but locked in a cabinet nobody on shift can open does not help you.

Before an inspection, services also receive links to electronic Care Standards Questionnaires. Services are expected to share the links with the people they support, families, staff and key stakeholders. I would see those as a gift rather than a threat. They carry the voices of the people you support, their families and your staff, often gathered before the inspector arrives.

How are the grades worked out?

Each quality indicator is graded on a scale from one to six, where one is unsatisfactory and six is excellent. The grade for a whole key question is set by the lowest graded quality indicator within it. So one weak area can pull down a key question where everything else is strong.

The guidance also says inspectors will normally look again at any quality indicator currently graded adequate. That is an opportunity. It gives a service the chance to show improvement and, where appropriate, move to a higher grade.

For some adult services that are performing well, the Care Inspectorate now uses core assurance inspections. These focus only on the core assurances for that type of service and are not graded, so your existing grades stay in place. If the inspector finds a concern, the visit can change into a fuller, graded inspection.

Why do well run services still struggle on the day?

A mistake I would watch for is treating inspection as an event rather than a habit. The guidance itself advises services to treat inspection as a process and not a one off event.

It tends to show up in a few ways. Self evaluation is done once a year for the file, then forgotten. Personal plans are reviewed on time but read like task lists rather than the person. The improvement plan exists, but nobody on shift could tell you what is in it. And the team has been told what to say, so their answers fall apart at the first follow up question.

The Health and Social Care Standards help here, because they are written from the person's point of view. The first headline outcome is simply: I experience high quality care and support that is right for me. When staff can describe their work in those terms, in their own words, nobody needs a script.

How do I make every day inspection ready?

Use the Care Inspectorate's own tools. Its quality framework for care homes for adults and older people says the primary purpose of a quality framework is to support services to evaluate their own performance. The same framework is then used by inspectors. That means you can test yourself against exactly what they will use.

I would start small. Pick one key question each month and work through it with your team, using real examples rather than ticks. Choose one quality indicator where you are honestly unsure, and gather evidence from all three directions in the table above. Then put what you find into your improvement plan, so the plan reflects the service as it is today.

Once a quarter, ask someone you trust to spend a morning in the service, unannounced, and tell you what they saw. Not a mock inspection with a script, just fresh eyes on an ordinary day.

When is this not the answer?

Readiness work is the wrong priority if you already know people are at risk. A protection concern, staffing you cannot cover safely, or an open complaint about someone's care comes first. Deal with it, record what you did and why, and get the right support for that situation.

If the Care Inspectorate has already started enforcement, that is a different conversation, and where legal action is involved you need a solicitor rather than a consultant.

And if your team already self evaluates honestly, your plan is current and the service looks the same at seven in the evening as it does at ten in the morning, you may not need anyone from outside at all.

Where should I start?

Start with the evenings and weekends. Visit your own service at a time you normally would not, and notice what you see. Then pick one key question and test it against the quality framework with your team.

If you would like a second pair of eyes, my inspection preparation and quality assurance audits are available to services in Scotland, built around the Care Inspectorate's own frameworks. When you are ready, book some time with me and we can talk through where your service is now.