Sample policy · Domiciliary care

Moving and handling in the community policy (domiciliary care)

Statutory anchor: Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (SI 1992/2793) and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 2, are the primary law for this policy. It also engages Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2936), quoted below as the CQC regulation in scope. · primary source

1. What the regulation says

The primary law for this policy is the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. These sit outside the CQC regulations manifest, so the verbatim quotes below are from Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), the CQC regulation that this policy engages.

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way for service users. (Reg 12(1) (the headline duty))

assessing the risks to the health and safety of service users of receiving the care or treatment, (Reg 12(2)(a) (risk assessment))

doing all that is reasonably practicable to mitigate any such risks, (Reg 12(2)(b) (risk mitigation))

ensuring that persons providing care or treatment to service users have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely, (Reg 12(2)(c) (staff competence))

ensuring that the premises used by the service provider are safe to use for their intended purpose and are used in a safe way, (Reg 12(2)(d) (premises safety))

ensuring that the equipment used by the service provider for providing care or treatment to a service user is safe for such use and is used in a safe way, (Reg 12(2)(e) (equipment safety))

where equipment or medicines are supplied by the service provider, ensuring that there are sufficient quantities of these to ensure the safety of service users and to meet their needs, (Reg 12(2)(f) (sufficient equipment + medicines supply))

The full text is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/12, and the primary manual-handling law is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/2793/contents and https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/2. Where this policy and the regulation diverge, the regulation wins.

2. Plain-English summary

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way. The regulation lists the areas a provider must address, including risk assessment, risk mitigation, staff competence, safe premises, safe equipment, sufficient equipment and medicines, medicines safety, infection prevention and shared-care planning. Regulation 12 is central to CQC's safety expectations. For moving and handling, the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 add a duty to avoid hazardous manual handling so far as is reasonably practicable, to assess the moves that cannot be avoided, and to reduce the risk of injury.

3. Purpose

Helping a person move, transfer or reposition is one of the most common and most risky tasks in home care. A person's home is not a designed care setting: space is tight, furniture is in the way, and the equipment a worker would have in a care home may not be there. This policy sets out how the Service assesses and carries out moving and handling safely in the person's own home, for both the person and the worker.

The Service must verify this policy against current health and safety law and HSE guidance before adoption.

4. Scope

This policy applies to:

5. Risk assessment in the person's home

Before a worker carries out any moving and handling, the Service completes a moving and handling assessment for that person in their own home. It is reviewed when the person's needs, the home or the equipment change, and after any incident. The assessment records:

Each move is written up as a clear instruction so that every worker does it the same safe way.

6. The home environment

The home is assessed as the place the move actually happens. The Service:

7. Equipment in the home

Where equipment is needed, the Service:

If the right equipment is missing or unsafe, the worker does not improvise. They contact the office, and the move is not carried out unsafely.

8. One worker or two

The assessment states clearly whether each move needs one worker or two. The Service does not ask a worker to carry out a two-person move alone. Where a two-person move is needed, two workers are rostered for it.

9. What workers do and do not do

10. When a person falls

If a person falls, the worker follows the post-fall steps in the falls guidance: check for injury, get medical help if needed, and do not lift the person manually. An uninjured person is helped up using the agreed safe method and equipment, not by manual lifting. The fall is recorded and reported.

11. Reporting and learning

Operational controls to adapt

Roles and responsibilities

Step-by-step operational procedure

  1. Assess before care starts. Complete a moving-and-handling assessment in the person's home before any planned moving task is delivered.
  2. Write each move as an instruction. Record the exact transfer, equipment, sling or aid, number of workers, route, dignity steps and what the person can do for themselves.
  3. Check the environment. Record space, flooring, lighting, furniture, pets, clutter, stairs, bathroom access and any hazard that cannot be removed.
  4. Check equipment before use. Confirm the equipment is present, the right type and size, clean, in working order and within service or LOLER check where relevant.
  5. Roster safely. Match the visit plan to the assessment, including two workers where required and enough time for the move to be done without rushing.
  6. Stop if the plan no longer fits. Workers contact the office if the person has changed, the equipment is missing, the room is unsafe, the second worker is absent or the move feels unsafe.
  7. Act after falls and incidents. Do not manually lift after a fall. Follow the post-fall process, seek medical help where needed, record the event and review the care plan.
  8. Review and improve. Review after changes in need, new equipment, falls, injury, complaints, hospital discharge, occupational therapy advice or repeated near misses.

Records and evidence fields

The moving-and-handling record should include:

Links to registers and action tracking

Unsafe moves, missing equipment, one-worker attendance for a two-worker move, manual lifting after a fall, worker injury, repeated near misses and unresolved environmental hazards are logged on the incident, risk, training or improvement-actions register.

12. Training

Every worker who carries out moving and handling completes, at induction and on a refresher cadence:

The Service records who is competent and when each refresher is due, and removes a worker from moving and handling tasks if a concern arises until it is resolved.

13. Audit cadence

The Service checks, on a stated cadence, that:

The Registered Manager reviews the results and records the improvement actions that follow.

14. Sources and further reading

This template is based on CQC's guidance for providers and managers, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, and other topic-specific legislation and guidance listed below. It is a starting point for adaptation, not a substitute for legal, clinical, HR, safeguarding or specialist professional advice.

15. Related reading

16. When to seek further advice

Seek specialist advice where the issue involves serious harm, safeguarding, deprivation of liberty, restraint, children, professional misconduct, controlled drugs, radiation, termination of pregnancy, infection outbreak, water safety, employment dismissal, DBS barring referral, or regulatory enforcement.

17. Document control

Version Date Author Changes
v1.1 2026-07-14 Verivius (sample) Added role ownership, step-by-step community moving procedure, evidence fields, register links and related reading.
v1 2026-06-10 Verivius (sample) Conformed to the Verivius policy standard: added the statutory anchor and header block, the verbatim Regulation 12 quotes, the plain-English summary, the standard sources and advice blocks, and document control. All original sections preserved and renumbered.

This sample policy template was issued by Verivius. It is a template, not a substitute for legal advice or the tenant's own policy-development process. Where this template and live law or regulator guidance diverge, the live source wins.

What good looks like here

Written from an ex-CQC inspector's chair, but the point is safe, well-led care your team can stand behind. Each row shows what strong evidence looks like, what thin evidence looks like, and where the expectation comes from.

Moving and handling in someone's own home carries a risk that does not exist in a designed care setting: the worker arrives alone, the room is the room the person has always lived in, and the hoist or stand aid often belongs to the equipment loan store or the occupational therapy service rather than to the provider. When the sling is the wrong size, the bathroom door will not take the hoist, or the second worker does not turn up, there is no colleague down the corridor and no spare in the cupboard, so the pressure to improvise falls on one person standing in a hallway with someone waiting to be moved. That is where community moving-and-handling harm tends to happen: to the person through a drag lift, a skin tear or a slide out of a badly fitted sling, and to the worker through a back injury that ends a career. The written record matters here because it is the only thing that travels between visits, and a move written up as a named transfer with the room, the route, the sling size and the number of workers is what lets a relief worker on a Sunday do it the same safe way as the regular. It also protects the person's experience of the move, because a move that is planned is one that is unhurried, explained and done the way they prefer, rather than negotiated under pressure on the doorstep.

  1. Each person has a current moving-and-handling assessment completed in their own home before care started, and refreshed after a change of need, the home, the equipment or an incident, so the move fits the person as they are now, not a generic form written off-site and never revisited.

    Strong evidence: The person-specific moving-and-handling record: assessment date, assessor, review date and the trigger for review, with each move written up as a named transfer, equipment, sling or aid, number of workers, route and dignity steps.

    Weak evidence: A generic template filled in at the office from the referral or over the phone, saying only that the person "needs assistance with transfers", with no room named, no route, no sling size and no note of what the person can still do for themselves. The review date has been rolled forward with the wording unchanged, and nothing was rewritten after the person came home with a profiling bed, after the stroke, or after the near miss on the stairs.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, reg 4(1)(b)(i) and reg 4(2); Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 12(2)(a)

  2. The equipment named in the assessment is actually present in the home, the right type and size for this person, clean and in service, and a worker who finds it missing or damaged stops and contacts the office rather than improvising with whatever is to hand.

    Strong evidence: Equipment make, model, size and service status, including thorough examination under the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER) for the lifting equipment those Regulations cover, with fault reports and replacement requests recorded against each move; missing or unsafe equipment logged on the incident register.

    Weak evidence: The assessment names "hoist and sling" with no make, model or size, and there is no record that anyone confirmed the equipment was actually in that home and fit to use before the first move. The provider holds nothing on service or thorough-examination status under the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER), having assumed the equipment loan store or the occupational therapy service has it in hand without ever asking or recording the answer. A worker's daily note that the sling was frayed or the stand aid was sticking never reaches the incident register and generates no replacement request.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 12(2)(e); Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, reg 5; Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, reg 9

  3. A two-person move is rostered for two workers, not one worker sent to attempt it alone.

    Strong evidence: Roster match to the assessed number of workers in the moving-and-handling record; one-worker attendance for a two-worker move logged on the incident register.

    Weak evidence: The assessment says two workers, the roster shows one, and the visit is signed off as completed with no exception recorded anywhere. Or "double-up" exists as a scheduling label that was never reconciled against the assessed number of workers, so call-monitoring data showing a single log-in at a two-worker visit is never questioned and never lands on the incident register.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 18(1); Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, reg 4(1)(b)(ii)

  4. A person who has fallen is helped up using the agreed safe method and equipment, not lifted manually, and the fall runs through to a recorded outcome so the next worker through the door knows what happened and what changed.

    Strong evidence: The fall recorded and reported with post-fall steps followed and medical help sought where needed; manual lifting after a fall logged on the incident register.

    Weak evidence: A daily note reading "found on floor, assisted back to chair" and nothing else: no record of how the person was raised, what equipment was used, whether injury was checked, or whether anyone decided about calling a GP or an ambulance. The phrase "assisted up" is often doing the work of concealing a drag lift, two workers lifting under the arms, and the incident form, where one exists at all, stops at "reported" with the outcome and the care-plan review left blank.

    What the regulator expects to see. Not a law in itself, but CQC judges you against it, so an inspector will look for it and expect a reason where you depart from it.

  5. Moving-and-handling incidents, near misses and equipment faults are reported, run through to a recorded outcome with actions completed, and reviewed together for patterns, so a run of near misses in the same bathroom or on the same hoist changes something, rather than being noted and left.

    Strong evidence: Incident, near miss, fall, injury or equipment-fault reference on the incident, risk, training or improvement-actions register, with the improvement actions the Registered Manager records after each audit.

    Weak evidence: An incident log that is a column of dates and one-line descriptions with the outcome field empty or filled with "staff spoken to", and no near misses at all because nothing was harmed so nobody wrote it down. Equipment faults are chased by phone or text message and never logged, a worker's back injury is treated as sickness absence with no thought given to whether it was separately reportable to the Health and Safety Executive under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), which logging it on the incident register would not discharge, and there is no record of anyone looking across the entries together, so three near misses in the same bathroom or four failed hoists on the same model are never noticed as a pattern.

    What the regulator expects to see. Not a law in itself, but CQC judges you against it, so an inspector will look for it and expect a reason where you depart from it.

  6. Workers are competent on the specific equipment used in that home, assessed in practice and not only in the classroom, and stood down from the task while a concern is open, so the person is not the one who discovers mid-transfer that this worker has never used their stand aid.

    Strong evidence: Worker competence and equipment-specific training records showing who is competent and when each refresher is due, matched to the roster.

    Weak evidence: A training matrix showing a classroom moving-and-handling certificate and a date, with nothing recording who watched this worker use this person's stand aid in that bathroom, and refresher dates already in the past while the worker stays on the roster. Where a concern has been raised about someone's technique, there is no record of which tasks they were stood down from, who covered them, or on what basis they were allowed back.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, reg 9(1); Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, reg 12(2)(c)

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Last verified 20 July 2026

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Last reviewed 10 June 2026