KCC Paid £549m to Care Firms Linked to Poor CQC Ratings

KCC has paid tens of millions to adult social care suppliers whose linked services include CQC ratings of Requires Improvement or Inadequate. The question now is not who started the contracts. It’s who is watching them.

Public money has a habit of turning warm political slogans cold. Kent County Council’s published payment data shows that, between April 2022 and March 2026, hundreds of millions of pounds in Adult Social Care & Health payments went to companies whose linked CQC-registered services include care homes, supported living schemes and domiciliary care services rated Requires Improvement — and, in one serious case, Inadequate.

This isn’t a simple tale of “good company, bad company”. It’s more complicated, and therefore more important. CQC usually rates individual registered services, not whole corporate groups. KCC’s payment data records suppliers and invoices, not the daily reality of each person receiving care. But that distinction doesn’t weaken the public-interest question; it sharpens it. If a council is paying large sums to providers whose linked services have been told by the regulator they must improve, the public is entitled to ask what KCC knew, when it knew it, and what it did next. KCC invoices-over-£250, exclude VAT.

The sums are not marginal. On an Adult Social Care & Health-only basis, KCC paid £549,181,328 to the 25 companies analysed across the four financial years from 2022/23 to 2025/26, excluding VAT. That is more than half a billion pounds of public money flowing through a care market where some linked services have been formally told by CQC that they are not performing as well as they should — and where one provider, PCAS Kent Ltd, is currently rated Inadequate.

CQC’s own language matters. Requires Improvement means a service “isn’t performing as well as it should” and CQC has told it how it must improve. Inadequate means a service is “performing badly” and enforcement action has been taken against the provider. Those words should land heavily in adult social care, because the people affected are not abstract service users in a spreadsheet. They are older people, disabled people, people with learning disabilities, autistic people, and residents receiving intimate support at home.

The starkest live example is PCAS Kent Ltd. KCC paid PCAS Kent Ltd £16.53m across the 48-month period, including £4.67m in 2025/26. CQC currently rates PCAS Kent Ltd Inadequate overall. Its latest assessment was on 25 March 2025 and the report was published on 30 July 2025. Safe and Well-led are Inadequate; Effective, Caring and Responsive are Requires Improvement. For a homecare service, that is not a footnote. It goes to whether people are safe, respected and properly protected.

Caretech Community Services Ltd received £35.92m across the period. Its linked Orchard House service in Ashford, currently Requires Improvement overall. CQC’s latest assessment was on 18 June 2025, with the report published on 27 August 2025. Safe is Inadequate; Effective, Caring and Well-led are Requires Improvement; Responsive is Good. Again, this isn’t an old amber light left over from a forgotten inspection cycle. It is a live 2025 rating attached to a service used by people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities who are residents of Kent

Achieve Together Limited received £36.04m. One linked service, Kingsdown House in Strood, is currently Requires Improvement overall. CQC’s page also records that the provider of that service changed. But the current profile still shows Requires Improvement, and that matters when the same supplier appears prominently in KCC’s adult social care payment trail.

The Avenues Trust Group received £38.67m. Avenues South East – 492 Maidstone Road is currently shown by CQC as Requires Improvement. Voyage Care Ltd received £29.59m, while its Kent and Medway Domiciliary Care Agency is currently Requires Improvement, with Safe and Well-led both rated Requires Improvement in a report published on 2 September 2023. Those are the very domains that ought to matter most to a council commissioner: is care safe, and is the service properly led?

Other examples sit closer to home. Forge House Care Ltd, paid £20.91m, has Forge House Care rated Requires Improvement, with Effective and Well-led requiring improvement. Hawkinge House Limited, paid £16.33m, has Hawkinge House in Folkestone rated Requires Improvement. Lauriem Complete Care Ltd, paid £13.42m, is rated Requires Improvement after an August 2025 assessment, with Safe and Well-led requiring improvement.

KCC’s payment data records Aspens Enterprises Limited, while the CQC page for Aspens Cornford Lane currently Requires Improvement, with the latest assessment published on 30 June 2025.

Nor is the story one-directional. Strode Park House is now rated Good overall by CQC, and that improvement should be acknowledged. A proper public-interest article should not pretend that every service linked to these suppliers is poor, or that a council can simply stop care packages overnight without harming vulnerable people. Adult social care is fragile, and KCC has legal duties to keep people supported. But fragile markets are not an excuse for weak oversight. They are the reason oversight has to be sharper.

This is where the politics stops being abstract, because the people receiving care are not entries on a spreadsheet. They are Kent residents: older people in care homes, disabled adults in supported living, and people waiting at home for safe, dignified help to arrive.

Reform UK took control of Kent County Council in May 2025. The new administration now occupies the watchtower, even if it didn’t build every road leading to it. KCC’s own announcement placed adult social care inside Linden Kemkaran’s Cabinet, with Cllr Diane Morton as the Cabinet Member (pictured), while Kemkaran promised to put “the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do”.

That promise has to mean something in adult social care. It has to mean more than a podium line, more than a press release, and more than a slogan polished for County Hall. Reform did not create every contract in this four-year dataset, and it did not preside over every payment. But it leads the council now. Adult social care is where “Kent first” becomes either a serious test of political accountability — or just another phrase looking for somewhere to hide.

And no, this has nothing to do with migrants. Migrants do not write care plans, audit medicines, supervise staff, manage safeguarding, chase CQC action plans or turn a Requires Improvement service into an Outstanding one. That responsibility belongs to providers, managers, commissioners, contract officers, councillors and regulators. If KCC’s leadership wants to put Kent first, it could start with the people whose daily lives depend on safe, dignified, well-led care.

The question for Reform-led KCC is therefore simple. When a supplier receiving millions from adult social care budgets is linked to a CQC service rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate, what happens next? Are new placements reviewed? Are families told? Are improvement plans demanded? Are contract managers escalating poor ratings? Are councillors seeing provider-quality dashboards? Or is the public money simply moving, month after month, while the regulator’s warning lights remain on?

The invoice is not the outcome. The outcome is whether a person is washed, fed, medicated, listened to, safeguarded and treated as fully human. On the CQC evidence, too many linked services have been told they are not there yet. That should trouble every councillor in Kent, whatever rosette they wear.

The Shepway Vox Team

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