47%
of Requires Improvement providers stay stuck at RI on re-inspection
Care Home Inspection Statistics 2025 — UK, AU, DE, IE, NZ Compared
Five regulators, five sets of numbers, one uncomfortable conclusion: most care home inspections arrive unannounced, and most providers are judged on the evidence trail they already built — not the one they're about to build. This is the aggregated 2024–2025 data from CQC (England), ACQS (Australia), MD Bund (Germany), HIQA (Ireland) and HealthCERT (New Zealand), with direct links to every source.
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- 47% of CQC Requires Improvement services fail to improve on re-inspection (UK).
- 19% of Australian residential aged care providers were non-compliant in Q3 2024–25.
- 24,700+ MD quality audits happened in Germany in 2023 — all unannounced.
- 840 HIQA inspections in Ireland in 2024; 84% unannounced.
- 100% of New Zealand rest home audit summaries are published publicly.
🇬🇧 England — CQC State of Care 2024/25
Regulator: Care Quality Commission · Published 24 October 2025
8%
of RI providers get worse — drop to Inadequate
3.5%
of adult social care services reach Outstanding
The State of Care 2024/25 report, published in October 2025, confirms that Regulation 17 (Good Governance) remains the most frequent reason services miss their rating jump. Audits, evidence trails, and records consistency — not clinical care quality — decide the grade band.
Source: CQC — The state of health care and adult social care in England 2024/25
🇦🇺 Australia — ACQS Sector Performance 2023–2025
Regulator: Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission · Special-edition report Apr–Jun 2025
19%
of residential providers still non-compliant (Q3 2024–25)
~39%
non-compliance rate for home care providers
+23pts
residential compliance rose from 58% (2022) to 81% (2025)
ACQS moved to a risk-based engagement model after the Royal Commission reforms. The bar keeps rising — yesterday's "compliant" may not clear today's assessment, especially for home-care operators whose compliance sits roughly 20 percentage points below residential.
Source: ACQS — Special Edition Sector Performance Report (Apr–Jun 2025, with 2023–2025 overview)
🇩🇪 Germany — MD Bund 8. Pflege-Qualitätsbericht 2025
Regulator: Medizinischer Dienst Bund + PKV-Prüfdienst · Published 12 June 2025 (data from 2023)
24,700+
quality inspections in 2023 alone
167,000+
care-dependent residents directly assessed
1×/yr
every facility audited annually, unannounced, under the QPR framework (since Oct 2019)
Every MD audit scores Mobility, Dekubitus, fall outcomes, weight loss and medication management at the resident level. Gaps in the Pflegedokumentation show up immediately because the auditor compares your written care plan to the resident's actual condition on the day.
🇮🇪 Ireland — HIQA 15 Years of Regulating Nursing Homes
Regulator: Health Information and Quality Authority · Published October 2024 + 2024 inspection summary
840
HIQA inspections of nursing homes in 2024 alone
84%
arrived unannounced — no prep warning
13
most-flagged non-compliance areas cited repeatedly year after year
HIQA repeatedly cites the same gap areas across hundreds of inspections: medication management, safeguarding, care plans, complaints, staff training, healthcare, risk management, records, residents' finances, fire precautions, infection control, premises, and governance. If it's on the list, it's already been scored against your peers.
Source: HIQA — 15 Years of Regulating Nursing Homes 2009–2024 (PDF)
🇳🇿 New Zealand — Ngā Paerewa Health and Disability Services Standard
Regulator: HealthCERT (Ministry of Health) · NZS 8134:2021 in effect since 28 February 2022
4
Pae (quality domains) must be passed at every certification audit
100%
of rest home audit summaries are published publicly on health.govt.nz
+
unannounced surveillance and spot audits between certifications
Ngā Paerewa NZS 8134:2021 splits into Pae Ora (whānau-centred care), Pae Tū (organisational), Pae Ata (service delivery) and Pae Whakahaumaru (safety). Every Designated Auditing Agency report summary is public — searchable by whānau, competitors, local media. A single Partial Attainment is permanent record.
Source: NZ Ministry of Health — Rest home certification and audits
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What These Numbers Actually Mean for Care Operators
Across all five countries the pattern is identical: regulators have moved from scheduled, announced inspections to risk-based, mostly unannounced audits. The UK's CQC, Australia's ACQS, Ireland's HIQA and Germany's MD have all increased audit volume and tightened their follow-up frequency for any service with a prior finding. New Zealand publishes every summary publicly, creating reputational consequences that last beyond the audit itself.
The single biggest finding that cuts across every jurisdiction: operators who fail their re-inspection don't fail on care quality. They fail on evidence quality. Regulation 17 in England, Standard 8 in Australia, QPR criteria in Germany, governance findings in Ireland, and Pae Tū in New Zealand all ask the same question: "Can you demonstrate this, right now, without a three-week prep sprint?" If the answer is no, the rating reflects that — not your team's actual care.
What Changes the Outcome
The operators who sit in the top bands across every country share three habits: they capture evidence when the event happens (not when inspection is due), they run internal mock audits against their regulator's framework at least quarterly, and they treat the audit trail as a living document owned by every staff member, not a folder owned by the manager. Software that auto-tags evidence to regulator criteria doesn't invent these habits — it just removes the friction that normally kills them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these statistics directly comparable across countries?
Not perfectly. Each regulator uses a different framework (CQC KLOEs, ACQS Standards, HIQA regulations, QPR, Ngā Paerewa). The numbers tell you the direction of travel and the scale of each regulator's activity, not a like-for-like pass/fail comparison. Use them for planning, not benchmarking.
Where does CQC publish the 47% figure?
In the State of Care 2024/25 report, published 24 October 2025. The specific finding: "47% of providers that were re-inspected following a rating of 'requires improvement' were not able to improve their rating." See the full report on the CQC website.
Why don't you show German pass/fail percentages?
The MD Bund reports frame results in terms of quality scope rather than binary pass/fail. The 8th Pflege-Qualitätsbericht focuses on inspection volume, resident-level assessment counts, and the quality criteria examined. We cite those honestly rather than invent failure percentages that aren't in the public data.
How often is this page updated?
Each regulator publishes annually or quarterly. We refresh the numbers when the source reports update — typically 2–4 weeks after a new State of Care, Sector Performance Report, or Pflege-Qualitätsbericht is released. The date in each section's subtitle shows the source publication date.