Maidstone Care Home Placed in Special Measures After CQC Finds "Significant Concerns"

Pilgrims Way Care Home with Nursing, a nursing home registered for up to 62 people on Bower Mount Road in Maidstone, has been placed in special measures by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after a damning inspection found "significant concerns" about the care it provides. The home's overall rating has fallen from "Good" to "Inadequate" - the regulator's lowest rating - with inspectors finding five separate breaches of the regulations.

CQC inspectors visited on 11 August 2026 and reviewed further evidence up to 25 August, by which point the home was caring for 48 people. The inspection was triggered by concerns about how the service was being managed. Among the problems identified in the regulator's published report: safety incidents weren't always reported to the local authority when they should have been; medicines weren't well managed; care plans didn't give staff the guidance they needed; and not all staff had completed the training required for their roles. Inspectors also found no reliable system to check that people who needed to be lawfully deprived of their liberty - for example, residents with dementia who can't safely be left to come and go - actually had the legal paperwork in place to make that lawful, and said infection control risks weren't being managed as well as they should be.

The CQC's report includes mixed feedback from residents' relatives. One told inspectors: "I don't put 100% faith in the care workers, the people not knowing him or agency staff doing things rigorously, in a rush... One safety concern, [my relative] pushes the button for a very long time before someone had come." The home's registered manager told the inspection team that was "unacceptable." Another relative, however, said simply: "They're making [my relative] comfortable and [they are] safe." Inspectors also noted some staff did not always use kind language when talking about residents, alongside other examples of care they described as good.

The CQC had already issued Pilgrims Way Limited, the home's provider, with formal Warning Notices on 26 August 2026 for failing to provide safe care and treatment and good governance - before this fuller inspection report was published on 15 October. Being placed in special measures means the regulator will keep a closer check on the home and expects to see significant improvement within a set timeframe; if that doesn't happen, the CQC can take further enforcement action, up to and including removing the provider's ability to run the service. Anyone with a relative at the home, or considering it, can read the CQC's full report - including its detailed findings on each of the five breached regulations - on the regulator's website.

Source: Care Quality Commission - Pilgrims Way Care Home with Nursing, CQC full assessment report, published 15 October 2026