Displaying your CIW rating the right way

Since 1 April 2025, every care home and domiciliary support service registered with Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) has been required to display its current CIW rating on its own website. It’s a simple rule, but a surprising number of Welsh care providers are still getting it wrong — or not doing it at all.

What the rule actually asks for

CIW rates providers against four themes — well-being, care and support, leadership and management, and environment — and rolls these up into an overall rating of Excellent, Good, Requires Improvement, or Requires Significant Improvement. If you’re registered, you have a rating whether you display it or not. The requirement is that this rating appears clearly on your website, not buried in a PDF three clicks deep or left off entirely because the site hasn’t been touched since the rule changed.

The mistakes we see most

• No rating shown at all — usually because the website predates the rule, or was built by someone outside the care sector who didn’t know about it.
• A rating that’s out of date — CIW re-inspects periodically, and a rating shown as “Good” from an old inspection looks worse than no rating at all if a family checks CIW’s own website and finds a different answer.
• Buried, not displayed — a link at the bottom of an “About us” page technically exists, but doesn’t meet the spirit of the rule and does nothing for a family scanning your homepage.
• No context given — a rating on its own means little to a family who has never seen the CIW scale before. Explaining what it means builds far more trust than the badge alone.

What “done well” looks like

A rating that’s easy to find — near the top of your homepage is best — styled clearly, dated, and linked through to your full CIW inspection report for anyone who wants the detail. Treat it as evidence, not paperwork: a current “Good” or “Excellent” rating, presented properly, is one of the strongest trust signals a worried family can see before they’ve even picked up the phone.

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