Free tool

How many care hours a week you'll need to deliver.

Plug in your numbers below. We'll show you the minimum weekly delivery your business needs to cover its costs. Drop your email at the end and we'll send the full cost breakdown as a one-page PDF.

1.
This is the minimum delivery target to cover your costs. Owner pay sits on top.
2.
The biggest variable is your charge rate. Most new owners pick a number that's too low for their area.
3.
Numbers assume England, CQC-registered, post-April 2025 employer NIC of 15%.
What you'll charge

Average rate you'll bill clients per hour of care delivered.

£ / hour

Council contracts in England typically pay £20 to £26. Private clients £28 to £45. Pick the rate you'll actually win.

Care worker pay

Hourly pay rate for your care workers. We'll add employer NIC, holiday pay, pension and PPE on top automatically.

£ / hour
Fully-loaded direct cost per hour £0.00
Office

Monthly rent. Use 0 if you'll start from home.

£ / month
That's per year £0
Registered manager

Will you employ a separate Registered Manager, or will you register yourself?

£ / year
Monthly cost incl. NIC, pension £0
Additional office staff

Coordinators, area managers, office admin. Add as many roles as you'll employ. We'll add NIC, pension and holiday automatically per person.

Insurance

Public liability, employer's liability, professional indemnity, cyber. Quoted as a single monthly average.

£ / month
Software & IT

Care planning system, scheduling tool, email, cloud storage, phones, broadband.

£ / month
Other monthly fixed costs

Anything else: training subscriptions, accountancy, legal retainer, marketing, fuel, parking. Estimate generously.

£ / month
What we're assuming

The numbers behind the maths.

  • Employer NIC: 15% on earnings above £5,000 per year (UK rate, post-April 2025).
  • Holiday pay: 12.07% uplift on hourly pay (statutory 5.6 weeks holiday spread over 46.4 working weeks).
  • Pension auto-enrolment: 3% employer contribution applied to the full pay figure (we round generously to keep the number conservative).
  • PPE: £0.30 per care hour (gloves, aprons, masks, hand sanitiser at 2026 prices).
  • Care worker pay floor: £12.50/hr. National Living Wage with a small uplift. The slider will not go lower because, in practice, you won't recruit at NLW alone.
  • Months in a year: 12. Weeks in a month: 4.33 (52 ÷ 12). Weekly hours rounded up to the nearest whole hour.
  • What we don't include: any salary or drawings for you as the owner, your own employer NIC if you take a salary, dividend tax, corporation tax, accountant fees beyond the "Other" bucket, marketing budgets above the "Other" bucket, or one-off setup costs (CQC application, equipment, first-month float).

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Home Care Growth

The home of Home Care Built to Scale. The programme for home care owners and registered managers operating in England, under CQC.

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