This year's annual return will be available to service providers for completion between Tuesday 6 January and Tuesday 17 February 2026.

Each year, we ask service providers to complete an annual return to help us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work. 

We also publish a number of annual statistical publications and share some of the information with other organisations, such as the Scottish Social Services Council and the Scottish Government.

The intelligence we gather through annual returns helps us target our improvement activity and support within social care. It is a great source of baseline data across a variety of health and wellbeing indicators which we use to identify, drive and track improvement, for example infection control, nutrition and the recruitment and retention of staff.  The data also helps us to identify trends and topics by both geographical area or service type, so that we can see where best to focus our improvement support work, for example, improvement workshops or new resources and guidance for care services across the sector.

The annual return will be available for services to complete through our online eForms system. All services must complete their annual return electronically, using the eForms system. It is important that services regularly check their eForms account to make sure that their email address is up to date, and that only authorised people have access to their account. All services should check their eForms email address now to ensure they are notified when the annual return goes live. You can do that here. Please note that where the manager of the service has changed, you must formally notify the Care Inspectorate of the correct details. This can be done using our online digital portal.

We no longer automatically downgrade services for failing to submit an annual return. This is because we do not believe that non-submission is necessarily a reflection of poor quality of service. We reserve the right to make a formal requirement relating to submission of an annual return, or in cases of serious or persistent non-compliance, to issue an improvement notice under s62 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, requiring its submission.

Even inactive services must submit an annual return.

Contact centre opening hours

We will be extending our contact centre opening hours for all services during the live period. There will be limited staff available, so we ask for your patience while we answer your calls during this time.

Our contact centre will be open:

  • Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 09:00 to 16:00
  • Wednesday, 09:00 to 14:00
  • every Thursday from 16:00 to 19:00 during the live period

You can call us on 0345 600 9527.

Alternatively, you can email the contact centre.

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