How a Verivius Mock Inspection works

A Verivius Mock Inspection is a structured pre-inspection assessment of your service against the live CQC Single Assessment Framework. An ex-CQC inspector reads the records held in your Verivius workspace, conducts one or two days of fieldwork (on site or remote), and delivers a written report you could hand to a CQC inspector without flinching.

The output is a single document covering:

• A provisional rating per CQC key question (Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-led), graded Outstanding / Good / Requires improvement / Inadequate.
• The evidence behind each rating, with verbatim references to the records the consultant read.
• A prioritised action plan, with each action assigned a priority, an owner role, and a recommended timeline.
• A re-inspection-readiness statement: in the consultant's professional judgement, when would your service be ready for a real CQC inspection at the target rating.
• A three-month follow-up check appended as a written addendum to the same report.

That is the substantive deliverable. The number on the invoice (£3,500 retail; £2,500 for design partners;£3,000 12-month lock thereafter) reflects three days of consultant time across six weeks, plus the platform doing the records-collection work in the background, plus the report itself.

These distinctions matter for both your expectations and your legal position:

• Not a CQC inspection. Verivius is not the regulator. The provisional rating is the consultant's professional opinion only. CQC may reach a different conclusion on a real inspection.
• Not endorsed or certified by CQC. No part of the report carries regulator approval. We do not present it as such; you should not either.
• Not a desk review. The methodology includes fieldwork because some of the most important evidence (observation of care, staff conversations, service-user experience) cannot be seen from records alone.
• Not a tickbox compliance audit. CQC inspection is judgement-led: the five key questions ask whether the service is safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led, and the answer comes from a sensible reading of the evidence in context, not from a fixed checklist.
• Not a guarantee of any future CQC outcome. No mock inspection from any provider can be.

If what you actually need is one of the above, the honest answer is to look elsewhere. We will tell you so on the scoping call.

A Mock Inspection runs across approximately six weeks (around 41 calendar days) from the day the engagement letter is signed to the day the final report is delivered. The three-month follow-up adds a 90-day tail.

Week 1     Scoping + access provisioning + document collection
Weeks 2-3  Platform review (consultant, working from your records)
Week 3     Fieldwork day or days (on site or remote)
Week 4     Report drafting
Week 4     Draft report delivered to you
Weeks 4-5  Factual-correction window (14 calendar days)
Week 5/6   Final report delivered
+3 months  Follow-up check appended to the same report

Total consultant time across the engagement: 8-10 working days. Total of your team's time involvement: typically a kickoff call, document collection across the first week, a fieldwork day, and a debrief call when the report lands. The platform handles the rest.

Phase 1 -- Scoping

A 60-minute kickoff call with your Registered Manager and Nominated Individual. The consultant confirms which CQC-registered locations are in scope, which regulated activities are being assessed, and a target rating (typically the rating you are working towards or defending). The consultant requests the documents they will need (organisational chart, recent inspection reports, internal audits, committee minutes) and proposes two fieldwork dates. By the end of the call you have a signed scoping document and a working timeline.

Phase 2 -- Platform review

The consultant works from your Verivius workspace for approximately three working days. They review the inspection pack that Verivius generates from your platform data: incidents register, complaints log, safeguarding concerns, statutory notifications, completion rates on assurance items, monthly oversight reports, attached evidence documents, staff register. The consultant reads it cold, the way a CQC inspector would, and forms initial hypotheses about your service's risk profile and the areas that need closer attention in fieldwork.

This is where the platform earns its place in the methodology. A traditional notebook-and-clipboard mock inspection spends two of its days on records collection. With Verivius, the records are already structured, already in one place, already auditable. The consultant uses the saved time on deeper analysis.

Phase 3 -- Fieldwork

One or two days, on site or remote, depending on the engagement scope. The consultant gathers the evidence that does not live in the platform: observation of care delivery, conversations with frontline staff, service-user or family interviews where appropriate, partner-organisation feedback. The fieldwork is structured (a defined evidence list to be gathered, mapped to the relevant Quality Statements) but conversational in delivery. Staff are not being inspected; they are being asked to describe their work.

Phase 4 -- Analysis

The consultant synthesises platform data and fieldwork findings into the five key-question assessments. Each Quality Statement is rated against the four-point scale. Gaps between the current rating and the target rating are identified.

Phase 5 -- Draft report

A written draft, structured the way a CQC inspection report is structured. Executive summary; per-key-question sections; evidence references; the action plan. You receive the draft electronically.

Phase 6 -- Your factual-correction window

You have fourteen calendar days from the draft delivery date to flag any factual errors in writing. Factual error means an objectively incorrect statement of fact: a wrong date, a wrong document reference, a wrong count, a misquoted policy. You provide the evidence; the consultant applies the correction.

Differences of professional opinion on a rating are not factual errors. The consultant's professional judgement on a rating is not negotiated. If you disagree with a rating, you may submit a written statement of disagreement which is appended to the final report verbatim. Verivius does not amend the consultant's findings to match the provider's view; the report would lose its value as an independent assessment if it did.

Phase 7 -- Final report and action plan

The final report is delivered electronically. The action plan inside the report is also written into your Verivius improvement-actions register: every recommended action becomes a tracked record with priority, owner role, and a recommended timeline, traceable back to the finding that triggered it. Your team can manage the actions through to closure inside the platform you are already using.

A three-month follow-up check is booked at delivery. Ninety days later, the same consultant reviews progress against the action plan (using the same platform data they read the first time, plus a short follow-up conversation) and writes a follow-up addendum that lands as an appendix to the original report.

For each of the CQC Quality Statements, the consultant references the six CQC evidence categories. Some categories come predominantly from your Verivius records; some come predominantly from fieldwork; some come from both.

Where platform data covers a category, the consultant uses it as the primary source and adds fieldwork only where the data leaves a question open. Where platform data does not cover a category (notably observation, staff feedback, family interviews), fieldwork is required.

Per Quality Statement, the consultant assigns one of four ratings: Outstanding / Good / Requires improvement / Inadequate. Quality Statement ratings aggregate to a per-key-question rating using CQC's published aggregation rules. Per-key-question ratings aggregate to an overall provider rating using CQC's published aggregation rules.

The aggregation is not a strict numerical average. A single Inadequate finding on a safeguarding-related Quality Statement, for example, can drive the Safe key question to Inadequate regardless of how strong the other Quality Statements in that question are. The consultant explains the aggregation reasoning in writing in the report so you can see exactly how each rating was reached.

Rating reasoning is documented per question with verbatim references to the evidence the consultant relied on. A statement such as "Incident INC-2026-0034 demonstrates a documented response to a medication error, with timely investigation and shared learning" is the shape of the evidence references. This makes the report auditable, both for you internally and, if you choose, for a real CQC inspector reading it.

What sits between a traditional notebook-and-clipboard mock inspection and a Verivius Mock Inspection is the platform itself. Three things change because the platform is there:

1. Audit trail. Every finding cites a specific record. Every action lands in your live operational system with a traceback to the finding that triggered it. A consultant working from paper notes cannot achieve this; the audit trail would not survive translation back into your operational tooling.
2. Three-month follow-up at a fraction of the standalone cost. Because the action plan lives in the platform, the follow-up consultant re-runs the same platform queries (assurance completion, action closure rates, new incidents in the period) plus a short conversation. The follow-up is included in the engagement fee. A standalone follow-up engagement, three months after a notebook mock, would typically cost about a third of the original engagement.
3. Reusable workspace. The records the consultant read remain in your workspace, structured, between engagements. The next Mock Inspection in twelve months starts from where this one left off rather than from scratch.

The 2-3x price premium over a notebook-and-clipboard mock inspection is real, and the structural reasons above are why it exists.

A Verivius Mock Inspection is delivered by an ex-CQC inspector working as a Verivius consultant. The current consultant pool is the founder, who spent thirteen years inside CQC as an inspector. Additional associate consultants are being onboarded through 2026 and are introduced to you by name in the engagement letter (clause 2.10). Each consultant has documented qualifications and sector-relevant experience.

Substitution during an engagement is permitted only with prior written notice to you, and only if the substituted consultant is equivalent in qualifications and sector experience. Substitution would only happen for genuine reasons (illness, family emergency, force majeure) and is rare.

All fees are exclusive of VAT. Verivius Ltd is not currently VAT-registered; if that changes between scoping and signature, the engagement letter is updated to reflect.

Payment terms: 50% deposit on engagement-letter signature, 50% on Final Report delivery. The cancellation bands published at /legal/cancellations-and-refunds apply.

Multi-location engagements: each location is treated as a separate Mock Inspection, running in parallel under a single engagement letter, at the Per-Location Fee multiplied by the number of locations.

The honest list of things this methodology does not cover:

• We will not present the report to CQC on your behalf or be involved in any real CQC inspection or enforcement matter.
• We will not act as your Registered Manager, Nominated Individual, or Responsible Individual.
• We will not provide clinical advice, clinical decision-making, or any service constituting the practice of medicine.
• We will not provide legal advice or representation in any CQC enforcement matter (refer to a specialist regulatory solicitor).
• We will not certify, accredit, or train your staff (the action plan may recommend training; we do not deliver it).
• We will not work on a Mock Inspection during an active CQC enforcement matter (where doing so could create the appearance of interference with a live regulatory process).

Where what you need falls into one of the above categories, the honest answer is that Verivius is not the right tool and we will tell you so on the scoping call.

This is methodology v1, current to the CQC Single Assessment Framework as published on cqc.org.uk at the date of last revision. CQC updates the framework periodically; the methodology updates with it. Where this methodology and the live CQC framework diverge, the live framework wins.

Review cadence: quarterly, or sooner if CQC publishes a material framework update.

This is a methodology summary, not a commercial agreement. The legal terms governing any engagement are in the Verivius Mock Inspection engagement letter, which is provided in draft to you ahead of any signature. See specifically:

• Clause 2 (scope and deliverables)
• Clause 2.4 (factual-correction window)
• Clause 2.5 (rating and conclusion disputes)
• Clause 3 (fees and payment terms)
• Clause 5 (data, confidentiality, and the Data Protection Schedule)
• Clause 8 (limitation of liability)
• Clause 9.1 (stage-gated refund bands)

The engagement letter is solicitor-reviewed before first use. Any deviation from this methodology that affects a specific engagement is recorded in the engagement letter itself, not by separate side-letter.