Supported living lives or dies on structure: care, support and housing correctly separated, tenancies real, funding lines clean. We build services that commissioners trust and regulators recognise.
In genuine supported living, people hold their own tenancy and receive care and support from a provider they could, in principle, change — the housing and the care are separate. Get that separation wrong and the consequences are serious: services can drift into unregistered care home territory, housing benefit positions can collapse, and commissioners will walk away from arrangements they consider contrived.
We design supported living correctly from the ground up: the relationship between care provider, housing provider or landlord, and tenant; tenancy arrangements that are real rather than decorative; the boundary between commissioned support hours, housing management and service charges; and CQC registration where personal care is delivered.
The commercial architecture matters just as much — how core hours, shared hours and 1:1 hours are structured and evidenced, how voids are handled, and what your agreements with accommodation partners actually commit each party to.
Commissioners and the CQC have both hardened their scrutiny of supported living arrangements — looking for genuine tenancies, real choice and control, and separation between landlord and care provider interests. Schemes that function as care homes in all but name face registration challenges and commissioning resistance. Our designs anticipate that scrutiny: clean legal separation, defensible funding lines and documentation that shows people genuinely hold choice over their home and their support.
We design the care–support–housing structure: who provides what, under which agreement, funded from which line — with the tenancy position made genuinely sound.
CQC registration is prepared where personal care applies, alongside support planning, risk and operational documentation for the model.
Agreements with landlords and housing partners are structured — responsibilities, voids, repairs, escalation and information sharing all defined.
Support-hour models and package costings are built with evidence commissioners accept, plus referral response frameworks for when placements arrive.
The accommodation itself is not registered, but delivering personal care to people in supported living is a regulated activity requiring CQC registration in England. Where your model includes personal care — and most do — registration is prepared as part of the package.
Combining the roles invites intense scrutiny of whether tenants have genuine choice and whether the arrangement is contrived. Structures exist that manage the risk, typically involving genuine separation of entities and interests, but they must be designed deliberately. We advise on the realistic options and their consequences — and where legal advice on tenancy or benefit questions is required, we say so plainly.
Voids are one of the most disputed areas in supported living — who carries the cost of an empty room, for how long, and what fills it. The answer belongs in your accommodation partner agreement before the first void occurs, and our SLA structuring addresses it explicitly.
Funding lines must match reality: rent and eligible service charges through housing routes, care and support through commissioned funding. Blurred lines create clawback and dispute risk. We structure the model so each line is clean and evidenced, and flag where specialist benefit or legal advice should confirm the position.
New and existing supported living providers, and accommodation-based support providers structuring or restructuring services.
Get the model right before it costs you a commissioner, a registration or a funding line.