Keynsham care home is the only outstanding one in B&NES

A Keynsham care home is now the only one in Bath and North East Somerset with the Care Quality Commission’s top rating, and it earned it during a visit prompted by a complaint.

Charterhouse Care Home, at The Chocolate Quarter on Trajectus Way, was rated outstanding overall in an assessment report published on 30 June by the regulator. It is run by the Bristol charity The Council of St Monica Trust, and 87 people were living there when inspectors called.

The detail most coverage has left out is why they called at all. The CQC’s own report states plainly that the assessment, carried out on 15 and 16 April, was “due to concerns that had been raised in relation to consent and information sharing. However, these concerns were not substantiated during the inspection.” In other words, someone complained, the regulator went in on the back of it, found nothing to support the complaint, and left having upgraded the home to the highest rating it awards.

Two of the five things the CQC judges came back outstanding: caring and well-led. Safe, effective and responsive were each rated good.

The one thing inspectors want fixed

The report is not uncritical, and the qualification is worth reading before anyone treats “outstanding” as a clean sheet. Inspectors wrote that while most areas of care were well managed, “improvements were needed in medicines management to ensure consistent safety and oversight.”

That sits inside the safe domain, which is why safe came back good rather than outstanding. Everything else in that section is positive: the regulator found effective safeguarding processes, systems that promoted learning, and good partnership working.

On the caring judgement, the CQC quotes residents and relatives directly. One resident told inspectors: “Staff are very kind and always take the time to listen to me.” Another said: “I feel safe and well looked after here.” A relative described the move into care, usually the hardest part: “The staff kept us informed every step of the way, which made a difficult time much easier.” One resident’s line is the one that probably explains the rating best: “It feels like my home, and there is always something going on if I want it.”

Only one in the district

We checked how unusual that is by going to the register itself. The CQC publishes the latest rating for every service it regulates, and the file dated 4 August 2026 lists 51 care homes in Bath and North East Somerset carrying an overall rating.

Charterhouse is the only one of the 51 rated outstanding. Forty-one are rated good, nine require improvement, and none is rated inadequate.

Nationally the same file lists 13,727 rated care homes, of which 615 are outstanding, or 4.5 per cent. Across the South West the share is a little higher, at 97 of 1,763, or 5.5 per cent. Bath and North East Somerset, on 1 in 51, currently runs below both.

It was rated good eight years ago

Charterhouse is not a long-established home. It registered with the CQC on 20 October 2017, in the converted Fry’s chocolate factory site that gives the development its name, and the regulator’s first inspection came almost exactly a year later, on 10 and 11 October 2018.

That report, published on 15 November 2018, rated the home good overall, with one domain, effective, marked as requires improvement. Inspectors noted the home had been through three managers in its first year, which the interim registered manager told them had held back the development of the care model. There were 44 people living there at the time, in a building then registered for up to 77.

Eight years on it houses 87 people and has moved from good with a weak spot to outstanding overall.

What it means for you

If you are looking at care for a relative in Bath, Keynsham or the Somer Valley, three things are worth taking from this.

Check the rating yourself, and check its date. Every rating is free to look up on the CQC’s find a service pages, and the publication date matters as much as the word. A rating published years ago describes the home as it was then. Charterhouse’s previous rating stood from November 2018 until this June.

Read past the headline word. An outstanding home here still has an open instruction to improve its medicines management, and a good home may be stronger on the domain that matters most to your family than one rated a level above. The five domains are published separately for exactly that reason.

Nine homes in this district are told to improve. That is not a scandal, it is the ordinary state of the sector, but it does mean the rating is worth looking up rather than assuming. Bath and North East Somerset Council arranges and part-funds placements for many residents, and you can ask what the current rating is for any home you are offered.

The full assessment, including all five domain judgements, is on the CQC’s page for Charterhouse Care Home. Providers can ask the regulator to review a rating through its factual accuracy and ratings review process before publication, and can request a review of the way an assessment was carried out afterwards.