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Prepare health and care locations in England

Use a regulated location, not a generic health-care organisation, as the first entity. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) directory provides location and provider IDs, names, addresses, postcodes, and service types under the Open Government Licence.

This is a source-preparation guide. It does not claim that each CQC location is a physical care site or that a later match is correct.

Pick one service type

The CQC location directory includes doctors and GPs, homecare agencies, dentists, residential homes, hospitals, and other services. Choose one exact service type for each lane. For example, use Hospital for a first hospital location lane. Do not mix provider organisations, home-care management bases, and hospital sites in one matching population.

Stage a pinned export

Open the CQC data access page, download the current CQC care directory CSV, and copy its exact download URL into this command:

$sourceUrl = "https://www.cqc.org.uk/system/files/2026-08/19_August_2026_CQC_directory.csv"
uv run python data/scripts/stage_cqc_care_directory.py --url $sourceUrl --service-type Hospital --output C:\tmp\arche-cqc-hospitals-2026-08-19

The date-stamped URL above is an example from 19 August 2026, not a permanent download endpoint. Always get the live URL from CQC, then retain it in the output manifest.

The command writes three files:

  • cqc_care_directory.csv: untouched CQC export.
  • cqc_locations.csv: selected service-type records, retaining CQC location ID, provider ID, address, postcode, and source fields.
  • manifest.json: source URL, licence, reported production date, retrieval time, record counts, and SHA-256 hashes.

For the 19 August 2026 example, the Hospital selection contains 782 CQC locations. It is a source population, not a count of physical hospitals.

Before matching

Check that the comparison source represents the same entity and has its own collection method. Preserve CQC location IDs and provider IDs as source identifiers. A provider can operate many locations; that is a relationship, not evidence that the locations are the same place.

Use the facility reconciliation guide for the candidate, evidence, and review workflow. The place validation plan sets the evidence required before publishing an accuracy claim.