CQC free download versus DataScoop: Surrey care homes with 40+ recorded beds
Measured 1 November 2026. Dated evidence, not a current whole-register claim.

TASK
Select care-home locations in the exact Surrey local-authority field, with at
least 40 recorded beds. Keep seven organisational columns: Location ID, name,
beds, local authority, postcode, overall rating/status and website. Write UTF-8
CSV and read it back to validate row counts and preserved IDs.

OFFICIAL ROUTE
Starting page: https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/transparency/using-cqc-data
Download the current Care directory with filters (ODS), open HSCA_Active_Locations,
filter Care home?=Y, Location Local Authority=Surrey, Care homes beds>=40, and keep
the seven columns. The source README in this run says 1 October 2026. The normal
weekly directory CSV lacks the bed-count field for this particular task.
We downloaded the 24,157,514-byte workbook and read 57,097 location rows.

DATASCOOP ROUTE
GET /v1/datasets/cqc/query with careHome=true, localAuthorityExact=Surrey,
minBeds=40, strict_filters=1, limit=25 and increasing offset. No key or payment.
Eight public JSON pages transferred 218,761 bytes. All pages retained the same
total and source import timestamp: 2026-10-24T20:35:05.648Z. Keep the same seven
columns, write CSV and validate by reading it back.
This run did not measure browser checkout or the paid full-CSV flow.

RESULTS
188 selected rows from each route; 187 shared Location IDs and one unique to
each output. Names, beds, local authorities, postcodes and websites match across
shared IDs. Rating/status labels differ for 58 shared locations: 57 official
labels correspond to blank DataScoop values, and one has two different nonblank
labels. Official rating/status coverage is 154/188; DataScoop is 97/188. Website
coverage is 122/188 in both. Missing values were not filled or treated as zero.

LIMITS
The official source date and DataScoop import date are different concepts and
different dates. The differences do not establish errors or actual openings,
closures or rating changes. The cause of the different rating coverage has not
been established. Prepared-code timing excludes development, manual spreadsheet
interaction, account setup and checkout. Concurrent computer load confounded
elapsed durations. No typical performance or customer time-saving claim is made.
Transfer sizes describe these two chosen routes; compressed downloads, caching,
other tools or a later source publication can change them.

REPRODUCTION
Download cqc-task-comparison-2026-11-01.py alongside this resource and run:
  python3 cqc-task-comparison-2026-11-01.py --out out/cqc-task-comparison
Python standard library only. The script uses public official and DataScoop
endpoints, requires no account, and retains the selected CSVs plus a receipt.
The full downloaded official workbook contains additional columns; those are
excluded from the selected outputs and published aggregate evidence. A rerun
uses current sources and is not guaranteed to reproduce the frozen counts.
Checksums, dates and detailed aggregate reconciliation are in the accompanying
cqc-task-comparison-2026-11-01.json.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence
v3.0. Source: Care Quality Commission (CQC). DataScoop is independent of CQC.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/