Most providers searching for a lone working policy template are asking a practical question: what does the policy need to say, and will having one keep our staff safe and satisfy CQC? The honest answer is that the template is the easy part. A lone working policy is a page of commitments. What protects a worker alone in someone's home, and what an inspector actually tests, is the procedure underneath it: the risk assessment before the visit, the check-in while it happens, and the right to walk away when it is not safe.
That gap between policy and procedure is the whole subject. A service can hold a well-written lone working policy and still leave a care worker exposed, because the policy describes a system that does not run. Another can have plainer paperwork and keep its people genuinely safe, because the check-in happens, the escalation works, and the records show it. The phrase "lone working policy and procedure" is really asking for both halves: the rules, and the runbook that makes them real.
The duty behind a lone working policy
There is no single law called the lone working act. Lone working is governed by the general duty every employer already carries. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires an employer, so far as is reasonably practicable, to protect the health, safety and welfare of its employees (section 2) and of others affected by the work (section 3). The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 turn that into a concrete obligation: a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks, which for a lone worker means assessing the risks of working alone. The Health and Safety Executive is clear that working alone is not in itself against the law, but it has to be risk-assessed and controlled.
CQC's interest sits alongside that, not instead of it. Lone-worker safety is first an employer and HSE duty. CQC reads it where it meets care: a worker who is not safe cannot reliably deliver safe care (Regulation 12, safe care and treatment), staff have to be deployed safely and in sufficient numbers (Regulation 18, staffing), and a well-led service can show it manages the risk to the people who do the work, not only the people who receive it. In a domiciliary or community service the two duties are the same daily fact: one worker, one home, no colleague in the room.
Where lone working shows up in care
Lone working is the normal condition of community care, not an edge case. It covers the home care worker on a round of visits, the community nurse, the single-handed clinic, the night shift with one person on, the receptionist alone at opening, and staff travelling between calls after dark. The risks are not exotic: aggression or violence, a medical emergency with no second pair of hands, an accident, an unsafe property, an unpredictable animal, and the plain fact that if something goes wrong nobody knows unless a system tells them.
Domiciliary care carries the heaviest version of this, which is why home care providers feel the pressure most. The care happens out of sight, the worker is often the only person who sees a change in someone's condition, and the same visit that protects the client has to protect the worker.
What the policy and procedure have to cover
A lone working policy that survives scrutiny does a small number of things, and each starts from a template but is only finished when it carries real records:
- A risk assessment for lone working that is reviewed, with a dynamic, per-visit element so a new client, a known-risk address or a changed situation is assessed before the worker arrives.
- A check-in and check-out system, so someone knows where each lone worker is, expects contact by a set time, and acts when it does not come.
- A clear escalation cascade for a missed check-in: who is called, in what order, and at what point the police are involved.
- The explicit right to leave an unsafe visit without penalty, and a route to report why.
- Lone-worker devices or apps where the risk justifies them, with someone monitoring the alerts.
- Training in personal safety and de-escalation, recorded against each worker.
- Incident reporting that feeds learning, so a near miss changes the risk assessment rather than disappearing.
Policy versus procedure: the distinction that matters
The policy states the commitment and the rules. The procedure is the operational detail that makes them happen: who checks in, with whom, by when, what the coordinator does when a worker does not call in, and how the escalation runs out of hours. A policy that says "lone workers will check in" is a commitment. A procedure that says "the worker messages the on-call coordinator by 9pm; if there is no message by 9:15pm the coordinator calls; if there is no answer by 9:30pm the cascade runs" is a control. CQC and a coroner both care about the second one.
How an inspector reads it
An inspector does not inspect the document. They ask whether a lone worker who hit trouble was protected, and whether the records can show it. The check-in log for the week. An escalation that actually triggered and worked. A visit a worker left because it was unsafe, and the review that followed. A risk assessment updated after an incident rather than filed at registration and never reopened. The template gives a provider a false sense of completion; the inspection asks the next question the template cannot answer: did the system work, and can you show me?
So download the template if it helps you start. Then do the harder and more valuable thing: write the procedure underneath it, run the check-in every day, and let the records show that the worker alone in someone's home is not actually on their own.
Related guidance
- Sample policy: Lone working and personal safety policy
- Sample policy: Lone working and personal safety, domiciliary care
- Checklist: Missed and late visits checklist
- Regulation explainer: Regulation 12, safe care and treatment
- Sector overview: Domiciliary care
- Guide: Domiciliary care compliance guide
- Article: CQC compliance for domiciliary care