How this directory works
A short, plain account of where this information comes from, what it covers, and what it deliberately leaves out.
Where the information comes from
Every care home on this site is built from the Care Quality Commission’s public register. The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England: it registers care homes, inspects them, and publishes the ratings you see here.
Ratings, inspection publication dates, the registered provider, the number of beds, the address, and whether a home is registered to provide nursing care are all taken directly from that register. Each individual fact on a listing carries the source field it came from and the date it was observed — open “Full official record and sources” on any listing to see them.
We are not the CQC, and we are not endorsed by the CQC. We publish their record; we do not speak for them. Where a home’s official inspection report exists, we link to it rather than summarising it.
What it covers
Greater Manchester only, across all ten local authorities: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan. Nowhere else is covered. We would rather cover one region completely and accurately than cover the country thinly.
Within that region we publish a bounded, reviewed set of homes while the service is validated. A home that is not published here is withheld deliberately — it is not a gap we have failed to notice, and its absence says nothing about the home.
How to read a CQC rating
The CQC rates a home Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate — both overall and across five separate areas: safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. A home can score differently in each, so the overall rating alone can hide something that matters to you. We show all five on every listing.
Ratings are not refreshed on a fixed schedule, and some are several years old. We print the publication date next to every rating, and flag any that is three or more years old — a home can change considerably between inspections, in either direction.
Nursing or residential
These are two different CQC registrations, and we take them from the register rather than from how a home describes itself.
- With nursing. Registered to provide nursing care, with qualified nurses on site for ongoing medical needs.
- Without nursing. Registered to provide personal care — help with washing, dressing, meals and medication — but not nursing care.
The two are independent, not opposites: a home can be registered for both, and those homes appear under each.
What is deliberately not here
- No reviews or star ratings. A regulator’s judgement is not a consumer review, and we do not present it as one. There is no review data on this site and none is implied.
- No paid placement. Which homes appear, and the order they appear in, is not for sale. Nothing on this site is sold.
- No prices, availability or photos. The official register does not carry them, so we do not show them. Contact a home directly for fees and vacancies.
- No advice. We do not score, rank or recommend homes, and we do not generate guidance about them. For advice about arranging care, start with a local-authority needs assessment.
If you run one of these homes
Find your home in the directory and use the claim link on its own page. Claims are verified per home, and a verified owner can supply additional details, which are shown separately from the regulator’s record so it stays clear which is which. If you have spotted an error in the official record, there is a report link on the same page.