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If you're a registered domiciliary care provider in England, the CQC Care Provider Portal is a system you need to understand and use correctly. Operated by the Care Quality Commission, it's the primary online channel for submitting statutory notifications and managing certain aspects of your registration.
The portal was significantly overhauled in early 2024, and if you had an account on the old system, your previous login will no longer work. This guide covers what the portal does, who's eligible to use it, how to set up an account, and how it differs from local authority care provider portals, which are an entirely separate system that providers often encounter alongside their CQC obligations.
What is the CQC Care Provider Portal?
The CQC Care Provider Portal is an online service operated by the Care Quality Commission that allows registered providers to submit certain statutory notifications and manage aspects of their CQC registration digitally. It's your direct online route to the regulator for a defined set of formal reporting obligations, replacing the older email-and-Word-form process for those specific notification types.
The current portal was launched in early 2024. The older version became read-only at the end of February 2024 and was retired shortly after. If you registered on the old portal before February 2024, your previous login credentials will not work on the new system. You will need to visit portal.cqc.org.uk and create a new account. The CQC sent invitations to existing users ahead of the transition, but any provider holding an eligible CQC-registered role can now register directly without waiting for an invite. It's worth signing up to CQC provider bulletins to stay informed as the portal expands its functionality over time.
What notifications can you submit through the CQC Care Provider Portal?
The portal handles a specific set of statutory notifications: the formal reports that registered providers are legally required to submit to the CQC when particular incidents or changes occur. Currently, the notification types you can file through the portal are:
- Deaths of people using the service
- Allegations of abuse (safeguarding referrals)
- Serious injuries to people using the service
- Events that prevent the service from running safely and properly (for example, a significant staffing failure or premises issue)
- Death of a detained mental health patient
- Outcome of a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) application
- Police involvement in an incident
- Unauthorised absence of a person using the service
Not all notification types are currently available through the portal. For anything not on the list above, you must still submit by email using the relevant Word form, which should always be downloaded fresh from the CQC notifications guidance page rather than using a saved version. When submitting any notification, check that your provider ID and location IDs are correct. These details will have changed if you have made any changes to your legal entity, and an incorrect ID is one of the most common reasons notifications are delayed or rejected.
Who can access the portal, and how do you create an account?
Access to the CQC provider portal is restricted to people who hold a CQC-registered role. You're eligible to create an account if you're one of the following:
- A nominated individual
- A responsible individual (if you registered with the CQC as an individual or sole trader)
- A registered manager
- A main partner (the primary contact partner listed on your provider registration)
The email address you use to register must be the one currently held by the CQC for your organisation. You can't use a shared inbox. If you\re unsure which email the CQC holds for you, check your provider registration certificate or contact the CQC directly before attempting to register. To sign in or create a new account, go to portal.cqc.org.uk.
A useful feature of the current portal is that nominated individuals can now create accounts for colleagues who don't themselves hold a formal CQC-registered role. This makes it easier for agencies managing multiple locations to delegate day-to-day notification responsibilities without requiring every team member to carry their own CQC registration. If you run into difficulties signing in or setting up an account, the CQC has a dedicated help page for portal account issues.
Local authority care provider portals: a different system entirely
A common source of confusion is the overlap in terminology between the CQC portal and local authority care provider portals. These are two completely separate systems serving different purposes. The CQC portal is about your regulatory relationship with the Care Quality Commission. Local authority portals, where they exist, are about your contractual and commercial relationship with your council as a commissioner of domiciliary care services.
Some local authorities use their own online platforms to manage domiciliary care contracts and process payments to providers. These typically allow providers to submit electronic timesheets, view payment schedules, and communicate directly with commissioning teams. However, not all councils have such a system, and those that do have developed them independently, meaning there is no single standard platform or shared login across the country. If you hold a council contract and are unsure whether your local authority uses a provider portal for contract management, your commissioner or contracts team is the right first point of contact.
For providers working with councils that require electronic call monitoring as a condition of their contracts, the data requirements are a separate consideration again. Electronic call monitoring involves real-time visit tracking using GPS, NFC, or QR code check-ins, and some councils use this data to verify that commissioned hours have been delivered and to calculate payments accurately. If your local authority requires this, your care management software will need to support it.
How digital care management keeps you prepared year-round
Whatever portal or system you're reporting into, the quality of the information you submit depends on how accurately and consistently you have recorded care delivery throughout the year. Providers who have to reconstruct visit records or piece together incident timelines after the fact are at a real disadvantage compared to those who maintain a real-time digital audit trail as standard practice.
Care management software like Birdie records visits, care tasks, medication administration, alerts, and observations continuously and in real time. When you need to file a CQC notification, the facts are already documented accurately and are straightforward to retrieve. For local authority contracts requiring electronic call monitoring, Birdie supports GPS-verified visit data that can feed directly into compliance reporting. You can read more about how digital care records support regulatory readiness in our complete guide to CQC compliance in homecare.
The CQC Care Provider Portal is a practical tool, and using it correctly is a straightforward part of your regulatory obligations once you understand the basics. The key steps are: ensure the contact details the CQC holds for you're current, register on the new portal at portal.cqc.org.uk if you have not already done so, know which notification types require the portal versus email, and keep your provider and location IDs accurate.
Beyond the portal itself, regulatory readiness is an ongoing discipline. Providers who maintain accurate, real-time care records throughout the year are better placed to respond quickly when incidents occur and better prepared when the CQC asks for evidence. If you want to see how Birdie supports that process in practice, book a free demo or read our CQC compliance guide for a full overview of what the regulator expects from domiciliary care providers.
Published date:
January 12, 2026
Author:
Lucy Ogilvie
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