Statutory guidance

Formal notice of a mandate for all adult social care providers

Updated 26 April 2024

Applies to England

Formal notice of a mandate for all adult social care (ASC) providers: information required by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from CQC-regulated ASC providers, under section 277A of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, as inserted by section 99 of the Health and Care Act 2022

This notice sets out information required by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care under section 277A of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

From 31 July 2022 and until further notice, the Capacity Tracker (CT) must be completed each month, with the information listed below.

Information is to be provided via the CT platform. You must do this by either updating each required field individually, or by using the bulk update functionality. If there are no changes to be made, you must save the page so that it is marked in the system as having been updated (which can be done using option in email reminder).

Information must be updated within a designated 7-day reporting window. This window will open at the start of the 8th day of each month and run until the end of the 14th day of each month, or the next working day where the 14th day falls on a weekend or public holiday.

Information required under section 277A from 15 July 2023

For care home provider locations, the mandatory information is:

• care home bed vacancies:
  • maximum capacity
  • occupied or used
  • (vacant) reserved
  • (vacant) accepting admissions
• workforce resourcing including absences:
  • total headcount of directly employed registered nurses
  • total headcount of directly employed care providing staff
  • total headcount of directly employed non-care providing staff
  • total headcount of agency or bank registered nurses
  • total headcount of agency or bank care providing staff
  • total headcount of agency or bank non-care providing staff
  • number of directly employed registered nurses absent, COVID-19 related
  • number of directly employed care providing staff absent, COVID-19 related
  • number of directly employed non-care providing staff absent, COVID-19 related
  • number of directly employed registered nurses absent, not COVID-19 related
  • number of directly employed care providing staff absent, not COVID-19 related
  • number of directly employed non-care providing staff absent, not COVID-19 related
  • how many hours you have paid direct employees to work in the last month or 4 weeks, including any overtime^{[footnote 1]}
  • how many hours of overtime you have paid for in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
  • how many hours of agency staff time you have paid for in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
  • how many days or hours of absence you have recorded in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
• COVID-19 vaccination (during a campaign and up to the mandation week following the end of a campaign):
  • number of directly employed staff known to have received a seasonal booster
  • number of agency or bank staff known to have received a seasonal booster
  • number of residents known to have received a seasonal booster
• flu vaccination (seasonal: 1 September to 31 March):
  • number of directly employed staff known to have received this season’s flu vaccination
  • number of agency or bank staff known to have received this season’s flu vaccination
  • number of residents known to have received this season’s flu vaccination
• visiting:
  • if residents have been able to take part in visits in and/or out of the care home
  • the visiting options currently being supported

For domiciliary care settings, the mandatory information is:

• how many service users are currently registered and receiving care from your agency
• number of staff in the organisation that have face-to-face contact with the people being supported
• number of staff delivering care that are not working because of COVID-19
• how many hours you have paid direct employees to work in the last month or 4 weeks, including any overtime^{[footnote 1]}
• how many hours of overtime you have paid for in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
• how many hours of agency staff time you have paid for in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
• how many days or hours of absence you have recorded in the last month or 4 weeks^{[footnote 1]}
• COVID-19 vaccination (during a campaign and up to the mandation week following the end of a campaign):
  • number of staff known to have received a seasonal booster
• flu vaccination (seasonal: 1 September to 31 March):
  • number of staff known to have received this season’s flu vaccination
• packages of care:
  • in the last 28 days, how many current NHS and local authority funded service users’ care packages you have had to return^{[footnote 2]}
  • in the last 28 days, how many current self-funded service users’ care packages you have had to end^{[footnote 2]}

Other data items in CT are often key for local operational support and providers will be asked to provide more regular updates to these items – for example:

• confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in staff and residents
• vaccination updates
• daily bed vacancy updates
• workforce data

Such data requests are separate to the mandated list but are essential to continue to support you as providers, and health and social care partners, such as discharge teams, to keep people and staff as safe and healthy as possible. The daily vacancy data is useful when more frequent because it supports people to be in the right place for their specific needs.

COVID-19 vaccination question definitions

A seasonal booster is defined as any booster delivered as part of an ongoing campaign. If there is not an ongoing campaign running, there will be no data item for seasonal boosters.

Future changes to the data set

As DHSC’s data needs evolve, we aim to give at least 3 months’ notice before making the new data need a legal requirement, as far as possible.

Failure to comply

Failure to provide the information in accordance with the requirements will amount to a breach of the duty under section 277A to provide the information.

Breach of the duty under section 277A could result in enforcement action by way of imposition of financial penalties. The Adult Social Care Information (Enforcement) Regulations 2022, made under section 277E of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, provide for a financial penalty to be imposed on a provider (other than a public body) who without reasonable excuse fails to comply with a requirement to provide information or provides information that is false or misleading to a material extent.

You will be contacted if you have not provided or updated the information required above on the CT by the deadline and, as having the most up-to-date data is most important, you will be offered support and advice on completing the next return. If you continue to be in breach of the duty, or persistently fail to provide or update your data, enforcement action will be taken under those regulations.

Contact will normally be established via a combination of emails, telephone calls by North of England Care System Support (NECS) and/or our delivery partner NHSBSA, to your named contact for CT and/or your registered manager and nominated individuals from the CQC Registry.

Please review your contact details on CT as we will be sending regular updates to your registered email.

Support and guidance

For guidance, see:

• Adult social care provider information provisions: guidance for providers on data collection

• Adult social care provider information provisions: guidance for providers on data enforcement

You can find all communications, user or help guides and video tutorials along with contact details for local system champions on the CT’s resource centre.

The CT is managed by NECS. For administrative amendments, account support, support completing or updating the system, and support accessing or using the reports and analytics please contact the NECS support centre by phone on 0191 691 3729 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm) or via necsu.capacitytracker@nhs.net.

For guidance relating to how to answer specific questions, please email capacitytracker-guidance@dhsc.gov.uk.

1. Time period optional to suit working practice, such as, could cover last complete pay period using payroll data in recognition that pay periods will differ between or even within providers (some staff will be paid weekly and others fortnightly or monthly) and no one pay period option will be meaningful to all. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. These questions refer to previously agreed packages that have been returned or ended after service provision started. ↩ ↩²