How to Start a Home Care Agency in the UK

Is Starting a Home Care Agency Right for You?

Demand for care at home is rising as people live longer and want to stay in their own homes, and councils, the NHS and families prefer it where it is safe. The providers that do well are run by people who have worked in care, often as a senior carer, deputy or registered manager, and who understand that the product is reliable, kind people turning up on time. A missed morning visit to someone who cannot get out of bed is what ends an agency's reputation.

The honest part is that you are running a staffing business with lives attached. Carers are hard to find and easy to lose to supermarkets and the NHS, rotas change daily around sickness and hospital admissions, pay has to cover travel time between visits, and councils that commission care often pay slowly at rates that leave little margin. Registration itself means months of costs before any income. Agencies that last plan their cash carefully and grow at the pace they can recruit.

A home care agency is the usual way into the sector because it needs an office, a registered manager and carers rather than a building. A care home means buying or leasing premises that meet building and fire standards, fitting them out and staffing them around the clock before the first resident arrives, which takes capital few first-time providers have. Some care home owners started with a domiciliary agency, learned the regulator and the local market, and moved into residential care later with a track record behind them.

Qualifications, Registrations and Rules

• CQC registration in England. Personal care, meaning hands-on help such as washing and dressing in someone's home, is a regulated activity in England, and providing it without registration is an offence. The Care Quality Commission application needs a statement of purpose, provider and manager forms, a personal care form covering how you recruited your directors and manager and local demand, policies and enhanced DBS checks obtained through CQC. CQC's homecare guidance lists every form.
• A registered manager and a nominated individual. Registration is not granted without a registered manager, who must be fit, qualified and experienced in care and is usually expected to hold or be working towards a Level 5 diploma in leadership and management for adult care. A limited company also appoints a nominated individual to speak for it to the regulator. CQC assesses both through DBS checks and interviews, so recruit the manager before you apply.
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland a care at home service registers with the Care Inspectorate and its workers register with the Scottish Social Services Council within six months of starting. In Wales a domiciliary support service registers with Care Inspectorate Wales and its care workers with Social Care Wales. In Northern Ireland domiciliary care agencies register with the RQIA. Each publishes its own application guidance and fees.
• DBS checks, training and the Care Certificate. Everyone who provides care needs an enhanced DBS check with the adult barred list before working unsupervised, with the PVG scheme in Scotland and AccessNI in Northern Ireland. New care workers are expected to complete an induction based on the Care Certificate standards, with training in moving and handling, medication, safeguarding, infection control and basic life support, followed by shadowing and supervision you can evidence.
• Safeguarding, medication and care planning. Agencies must have a safeguarding policy, a lead who knows how to raise concerns with the local authority, and trained staff. Medication support needs a policy, trained staff, records of every dose and a clear line between prompting and administering. Every client needs an assessment, an agreed and regularly reviewed care plan and a risk assessment of their home, all of which the regulator will read.
• Employment law and the realities of pay. Carers are usually employees, with right to work checks, contracts, pensions, holiday pay and National Minimum Wage rules under which travel time between visits counts as working time, so scattered short visits can take pay below the legal minimum. The visa route for recruiting care workers from abroad was closed to new overseas applicants in 2025, so plan to recruit locally and check GOV.UK.

Setting Up the Business

• Limited company or other structure. Most home care agencies are limited companies, because the regulator, insurers, councils and banks expect it and because it separates your finances from a business carrying real liability. Register at Companies House before applying to the regulator, since the legal entity is the provider, and take an accountant's advice on structure and directors' pay.
• HMRC, VAT and payroll. Register the company for Corporation Tax and set up PAYE before the first carer's first shift, with payroll software that handles pensions and travel time. Welfare services provided by a regulated care provider are usually exempt from VAT, which also means you cannot reclaim VAT on your costs, so ask an accountant who knows the sector how the rules apply to you.
• Bank account, bookkeeping and cash flow. Open a business account early, because the regulator wants evidence that the business is financially viable, and choose bookkeeping software that invoices clients and tracks who has paid. Cash flow is the quiet killer: carers are paid every week or month, while private clients pay in arrears and councils pay later still, so build a working capital buffer before the first package of care.
• Insurance. Employers' liability insurance is a legal requirement from the first employee, and the regulator, councils and clients will expect public liability and professional indemnity, often as a combined care policy, plus cover for carers driving their own cars for work and for handling clients' money or keys. Insurers price on your policies, training and recruitment, so have them written first.
• Data protection and confidentiality. Care records are health information, which is special category data, so you need a privacy notice, a data protection policy, secure systems rather than paper notes left in cars, staff training in confidentiality and usually the annual data protection fee paid to the Information Commissioner's Office. Decide early who may see what and how families are kept informed with the client's consent.
• Rostering, care planning and the office. You will need a base the regulator can inspect, with secure records, which can be a small office rather than a shop front. Rostering software that matches carers to visits, tracks travel time and logs arrivals and departures, and a digital care-planning system that carers update on a phone, are categories most new agencies adopt, because inspectors, councils and families expect to see visit records and medication charts.

Start-up Costs and What You Need

The first costs arrive long before the first invoice. Registration fees, which the regulator publishes, a registered manager's salary from the month you recruit them, an office lease or serviced desk, insurance, policies and the training your manager and first carers need all fall due while the application is being assessed. Add uniforms, PPE, a phone system, software subscriptions, DBS checks for every recruit and the marketing that brings the first clients.

Then there is the gap. Registration commonly takes months and the first clients come slowly, so the business pays a manager, an office and insurance with little or nothing coming in, and once care starts the carers are paid before the clients pay you, with councils often settling weeks after the care was delivered. Most founders underestimate this working capital, which is why many agencies start with the founder as registered manager and a tiny office.

Build the budget from the regulator's fee pages, insurers' quotes, software trials and the pay rates carers in your area actually accept, then add a contingency for a rejected application, a recruitment campaign that fails or a key client going into hospital. Start-up grants for care agencies are uncommon, so most are funded from savings or a loan against a convincing plan. Every figure on that list ends up in your hourly rate.

Pricing Your Work

Home care is priced by the hour, and most agencies also set rates for shorter visits, with higher rates for evenings, weekends and bank holidays and a weekly rate for live-in care. Work out what a carer costs per hour of care delivered, including travel time, mileage, holiday pay, pensions, training, supervision and the hours lost to cancellations, then add the office, the manager, software, insurance and a margin. The result is your private rate.

Councils and the NHS pay set rates through their frameworks, and those rates are often below what a well-run agency needs, which is why so many providers start with self-funding clients and add commissioned work carefully. The Homecare Association publishes a minimum price for homecare each year that explains the arithmetic, worth reading before you agree to anything. Do not take a package just to fill the diary, because a loss-making client occupies carers you need for a profitable one.

Put the terms in writing before care starts: the hourly and visit rates, how cancellations are charged, notice periods on both sides, how you invoice, usually weekly or fortnightly in arrears, and what happens when someone goes into hospital. Private clients are often older people managing their own money or children managing it for them, so clarity matters, and a plain agreement is what the regulator and the Competition and Markets Authority expect.

Finding Your First Customers

• Families and word of mouth. Most private clients are found by a son or daughter, often in a hurry after a fall, and they ask people they trust before they search. Tell everyone what you are doing, visit community groups and lunch clubs, and look after the first few clients so well that their families become your sales team.
• GP surgeries, pharmacies and hospital discharge teams. Practice managers, district nurses, pharmacists, social workers and discharge coordinators meet people who need care today and have a list of agencies that answer the phone and can start quickly. Introduce yourself with your registration details, availability and a one-page summary of what you can take on, and keep going back, because the list changes with the staff.
• Directories and reviews. Families compare agencies on homecare.co.uk and similar directories, on the regulator's own website and on Google, and read the reviews. A complete listing with real photographs of the team, your registration status and honest descriptions of the care you provide brings enquiries once the first families have left reviews. Ask them to.
• A Google Business Profile and a website. Searches for home care in a town are made by adult children, often late at night, and the agencies they find have a Google Business Profile, recent reviews and a website explaining the care, the area, the team and how to start. Set the profile up as a service-area business early and get the website live before registration, worded carefully.
• Councils, the NHS and frameworks later. Local authorities buy most home care through frameworks or dynamic purchasing systems, but tenders usually ask for registration, policies, insurance, references and often an inspection rating, which a new agency cannot have yet. Register your interest with the council's commissioning team, ask when the framework next opens and treat commissioned work as a second phase.

Your Website and Online Presence

A home care website is read by a worried daughter at eleven at night, and it has three jobs: explain the care you provide and where, show who is behind the agency and how carers are checked and trained, and make it easy to ask for a call back. It also has to recruit, because you cannot take a client without carers to send, so a careers page with honest job descriptions and an application form that works on a phone belongs in the first version.

Get the site live while the application is being assessed, so that the Google profile, directories and discharge teams have somewhere to point, but word it carefully: say that registration is in progress rather than claiming to be registered, and switch the wording the day the certificate arrives. In England, once you have been inspected, the rating, its date and a link to the report must be displayed on the site. Our startup website checklist and guide to writing website copy cover the groundwork, and DigitalPod builds websites for care providers across the UK, entirely online.

When you are ready for a website, our startup care home website design page explains what a new home care agency needs on day one, our care home website design page covers the full picture for an established business, and care home website design prices sets out what it costs. Startup websites start from £2,400, and our startup website checklist lists what to have ready.

Mistakes New Home Care Agencies Make

• Providing personal care, or advertising that you do, before the regulator has confirmed registration, which is an offence and ends the business before it starts.
• Applying before the registered manager, policies and statement of purpose are ready, so the application is rejected and goes to the back of the queue.
• Taking council packages at rates that do not cover travel time, training and supervision, then finding carers' pay has slipped below the minimum wage.
• Growing faster than you can recruit, so visits are late or missed and the first inspection report says so.
• Keeping care notes on paper and in group chats, which fails the records requirements, the data protection rules and the first safeguarding complaint.
• Running the agency without a working capital buffer, so one slow-paying council or one client's hospital admission leaves you unable to pay wages.

Your First 90 Days

1. Decide your model, hourly visits, live-in care or both, and the area you will cover, then research local demand and competition, because the regulator will ask about it.
2. Form the limited company with an accountant's advice, open a business bank account, set up bookkeeping and payroll and register with HMRC.
3. Recruit or confirm your registered manager, obtain the enhanced DBS checks through the regulator's route and write the statement of purpose.
4. Write the policies the regulator expects, from safeguarding and medication to complaints, recruitment and data protection, and choose your rostering and care-planning software.
5. Arrange employers' liability, public liability and professional indemnity insurance, pay the data protection fee and submit the complete registration application in one go.
6. Register a .co.uk domain, following our guide to choosing a domain name, set up a Google Business Profile and get the website live with a careers page, worded as registration in progress.
7. Start recruiting carers before registration is granted, with right to work and DBS checks, references and a Care Certificate induction plan, and build the first rota.
8. Introduce the agency to GP surgeries, pharmacies, social workers and discharge teams, list it on the care directories and tell every local group you can reach.
9. When registration is confirmed, update the website that day, take on the first clients at a pace the rota can hold, and review the first ninety days before growing.