The desk
Terms of use
These pages may be read, quoted and linked to freely, and a larger reuse is answered by a message rather than by a licence printed in advance. What they offer is general information about what the law in England says, written from public sources and dated.
Last checked on 3 September 2026
What may you do with these pages?
Read them, quote them, and link to them. A quotation from a page here is welcome with two things beside it: the address of the page, and the reading date shown at its top, because a page about a moving set of rules is only as good as its date. Using a page as the basis of advice given to someone else, or reprinting a table of it whole, is a different matter, and the answer to that is a message rather than a licence printed in advance. Requests are answered case by case, and the answer says yes more often than it says anything else, because the material is written to be used.
Linking needs no permission and no notice. A link to a page here goes to its address as shown, and the addresses are meant to be stable: the guide is built so that an address that worked once keeps working, and a link that breaks is a fault to be told about rather than a feature of the design.
Where does the material come from?
From public sources, named at the foot of each page. The revised text of the Care Act 2014 and the Care and support statutory guidance are Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence, which permits the short, credited quotation these pages make of them: a section named, a phrase quoted, the source dated. It does not permit a full section to be reprinted here, and none is. The same licence covers the open data of the Care Quality Commission, with the attribution it asks for, and those files are republished on a rhythm worth knowing: the Care Directory every week, and the directories with filters and with ratings every month. The versions read for this handbook were 2 September 2026 for the weekly file and 4 August 2026 for the two monthly ones.
Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data. Weekly Care Directory of 2 September 2026 and monthly directories of 4 August 2026, as listed on that page, read on 3 September 2026.
Those data files carry the names of registered managers, and the names stay in the files. A version date, a description of what a file covers or a note that it has been republished can appear on a page here; a person's name taken out of it does not. The method behind those choices, and the reading dates of every source in the handbook, are set out in how this site works.
How is material paid for by someone else marked?
With a label at the top of the page, naming who paid for it and what it covers, in the same place on every page it applies to. That is the whole rule, and it is written here in advance so that the marking is recognisable if it ever appears. The pages published so far were written from the sources named at their feet, and none of them carries the label.
May the tables be copied?
The tables are the most reused thing on this site and the most carefully sourced, which makes them the thing most worth copying accurately. A table copied whole should carry the source line under it, because the line is what makes the rows usable: without the version and the date, a row about a section of law is only a row. Ask first through write to the desk, and the answer will normally be to take it with the line attached.
What can these pages settle?
They settle what the law says and where it says it, in England, for adults who need care and support and for the people around them. They do not settle a case. No page here assesses a person's needs, works out whether a person qualifies, or advises on a decision that has been taken about someone, because a general guide has no standing to do any of those things and a reader who relied on one for that would be relying on the wrong document. The office of a general guide is to make the reader quicker at the next step, and the next step is usually a conversation with a council, with an advocate or with an advice service.
What a page here is
A page explains what the law in England says and names the section it says it in. It is general information rather than advice about a situation, and it describes the law of England alone. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own systems, and a page written from the Care Act 2014 says nothing about them.
How do these terms change?
The way the pages do. When a rule described somewhere in the handbook moves, the page is read again and the register records the date. The stamp at the top of this page moves when the terms themselves change rather than when a source does, which keeps the two kinds of change apart. Nothing here rewrites itself quietly: the privacy page works on the same principle for what the site keeps, and both pages describe the site as it is built today.
Sources read for this page
- Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
- Care Quality Commission, Using CQC data
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.