Notes
Notes
The sources behind care and support in England are reissued rather than repealed: a guidance page carries an update date, a statistics series a publication date, and the CQC data files are reprinted weekly. Each note records one of those changes, the date the document carries, and the date the source was read.
Last checked on 3 September 2026
What does a note record?
One change, in one document, with the date that document carries. A note records that the Care and support statutory guidance was updated on a given date, that a data file was republished under a new version date, or that a yearly statistical series came out for a new financial year. The first date on a note belongs to the source. The last one belongs to this handbook: the day that source was opened and read.
The full register sits on the front page, newest first, and the same items go out in the site feed. This page is the prose around it: what the two dates on a note mean, which dates arrive on a schedule you can plan around, and why a note sometimes stops short of a figure on purpose.
Why does every note carry two dates?
Because the day something changed and the day it was read are different facts, and a page that merges them always looks more current than it is. The change date is printed on the document itself: an update date on a guidance page, a publication date under a statistics release, a version date inside a data file. The reading date is the one this handbook adds. Together they answer the question a bare link never answers, which is whether a sentence was written against the version in force.
The document councils in England work from shows why the pair matters. The Care and support statutory guidance carries a first publication date of 29 July 2016 and a last update of 22 July 2025, and advice written before that update may describe a version that has since moved on. That is the reason the update date travels beside every mention of the guidance on this site.
Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, first published 29 July 2016, last updated 22 July 2025, read on 3 September 2026.
A statute is dated the same way, and the dating says more than a link would. The revised text of the Care Act 2014 on legislation.gov.uk is marked Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, and its contents page states that amendments made by the Health and Care Act 2022 have not been applied. Both facts travel with every section quoted here, because a page that named no version would leave a reader assuming that the printed text and the law in force are the same thing.
Care Act 2014, notice on the contents page. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.
What changed in the days before this handbook was checked?
Most changes are reissues rather than announcements. The Care Quality Commission publishes its Care Directory every week and its directories with filters and with ratings every month, and the versions listed when that page was read were 2 September 2026 for the weekly file and 4 August 2026 for the monthly ones. Nothing here is counted from those files on the strength of a version number: they are opened, and the opening is what gets dated.
Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data, weekly Care Directory version 2 September 2026, monthly directories version 4 August 2026, read on 3 September 2026.
The smallest unit of change is a page update, and it carries the least information of any of them. The GOV.UK pages for Personal Independence Payment, Universal Credit and Attendance Allowance were updated on 6 November 2024, 17 October 2024 and 21 October 2024 respectively. An update date says that what the page carries now is the current wording; it does not say what moved. That is why benefit rates are read on those pages rather than reprinted anywhere on this site, and why a note about a benefit page records the date and stops there.
GOV.UK, Personal Independence Payment, updated 6 November 2024; Universal Credit, updated 17 October 2024; Attendance Allowance, updated 21 October 2024, read on 3 September 2026.
Which dates can you plan around?
Three series arrive when their publisher says they will, and the pattern is steady enough to keep in a diary. The workforce report from Skills for Care was last published on 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data. The report that records what councils were asked for and what they paid, the Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report for 2023-24, was published on 31 October 2024. The health series comes in December: the 2024-25 edition of Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities was published on 4 December 2025. Around those three, the CQC files turn over weekly, and the statutory guidance moves when it moves.
Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, published 15 October 2025, on 2024/25 data, read on 3 September 2026.
Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England 2023-24, published 31 October 2024, read on 3 September 2026.
For anyone on the provider side, those autumn weeks are when the figures most often quoted for the year ahead appear, and what a provider must do collects the duties that stay fixed while the numbers around them turn over.
What do the December figures measure?
A percentage from that series counts people recorded by their GP, which makes it a measure of recording as much as of care. The 2024-25 edition records that 81.5 per cent of patients with a learning disability had an annual health check in 2024-25, against 79.6 per cent in 2023-24, and that 0.55 per cent of registered patients were recorded by their GP as having a learning disability, against 0.54 per cent the year before. The same edition records that 35.3 per cent of patients with a learning disability also had a diagnosis of autism, against 33.3 per cent in 2023-24 and 21.4 per cent in 2017-18, the first year the series is comparable.
Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, 2024-25, NHS England, published 4 December 2025, read on 3 September 2026.
Reading the movement is a job for the pages that use the numbers, and the first thing those pages read is the definition. The register at the GP practice decides who can be counted, so a change in how the register is kept moves the percentage before any change in care does. The check the series measures is open from the age of 14 to anyone on a GP practice register, and the NHS page that describes it was reviewed on 24 September 2025, with the next review due on 24 September 2028. The page that follows the appointment itself, from the register to the plan that is meant to come out of it, is the annual health check.
NHS, annual health checks for people with a learning disability, page reviewed 24 September 2025, next review due 24 September 2028, read on 3 September 2026.
Where does the Code of Practice fit?
Some documents change rarely, and the rarity is itself information. For the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice, the dates are 22 July 2013 for first publication and 14 October 2020 for the last update. It is the document to read alongside the Act whenever a decision is being taken for an adult rather than by them, and its update date has stood still through every other change recorded here. A note about it would be short, and a note that stays short for years is still doing its job.
Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice, Ministry of Justice, first published 22 July 2013, last updated 14 October 2020, read on 3 September 2026.
How does a change reach the rest of the handbook?
In one direction. When a source would move, the page that quotes it is read again first, the sentence is corrected, and the note is what records that the reading happened. A note is the record of a correction rather than the correction itself, which is why the guide carries the new sentence and the note carries the date. The rows of the route map work exactly this way: each row names a section of the Act, and a row gains its chapter of the guidance only once that chapter has been opened, quoted and dated.
For a reader, the practical entry point is the page that sets out the rights themselves: what the law says carries the rights named in the Act with their sections, and it is the page most often affected when the guidance moves. The method behind all of this, including the reasons some sentences here stop short of a figure, is written once in how this site works.
What a note is
A note names one document, one date that the document carries, and the day that document was opened. Where a figure has not been read in the source itself, the note says so and stops there. A line without a number is the honest form of that sentence, and it is the form this register prefers.
Sources read for this page
- Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025
- Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, 2024-25, NHS England, published 4 December 2025
- Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data
- Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England 2023-24, published 31 October 2024
Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.