Opening a care agency in England is the only business in this series that can be refused permission to exist. Providing personal care without registering with the Care Quality Commission is a criminal offence, and the CQC’s own guidance states that applications from domiciliary care agencies are the most likely to be delayed or refused. What follows sets out the process in England, and flags where the other nations differ.
Most start-up guides treat regulation as paperwork to be completed after the commercial decisions are made. Home care inverts that. The regulator decides whether the business may trade at all, it assesses the named individuals rather than the brand, and it can say no.
Everything else, the office, the funding, the marketing, follows from clearing that gate. This is also the sector where the UK’s four nations diverge most sharply, because each has its own regulator and its own registration regime.
What is a care agency business?
A domiciliary care agency, also called a home care agency, supplies paid care workers to people living in their own homes and manages those workers. What makes it regulated is the regulated activity of personal care, defined in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014: help with washing, dressing, eating and medication.
An agency that merely introduces care workers to clients, or supplies staff to another registered provider, is not carrying on that activity and does not register. The distinction is ongoing direction or control of the worker. If the agency manages the care, it registers. If it hands over responsibility entirely, it does not.
How to open a care agency in the UK, step by step
Establish whether registration applies
The first question is not commercial. A provider delivering personal care with ongoing direction or control of its workers must register, whether it trades as an individual, a partnership or a company. Partnerships cannot avoid it.
Three activities are exempt: acting as an employment agency or employment business supplying care workers to others, making introductions with no ongoing role, and an individual care worker directly employed by the person receiving care without an agency involved.
Identify the registered manager and the nominated individual
An organisation registers two people alongside itself. The registered manager must have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to manage the regulated activity under Regulation 7, and is assessed personally. The nominated individual is the person responsible for supervising how the activity is carried on.
In a small agency the same person often holds both roles. Securing a credible registered manager before applying is the single most common bottleneck, because the application is judged partly on that individual.
Write the statement of purpose and the policy set
The statement of purpose is a formal document describing the service, its aims, the people it serves and the locations it operates from. It is submitted with the application and it binds what the agency may then do. Alongside it sits a full policy and procedure set mapped to the CQC’s quality statements. Applications commonly fail because these documents are generic rather than written for the service actually proposed.
Choose a structure and register the business
A private company limited by shares is the usual structure, incorporated at Companies House, with directors carrying statutory duties under the Companies Act 2006 and now verifying their identity. A PAYE scheme follows before the first payday.
Welfare services supplied by a state-regulated provider are generally exempt from VAT rather than zero-rated, which means an agency usually cannot recover VAT on its costs, so VAT is a cost line rather than a pass-through.
Arrange the funding
Care is a working capital business rather than a capital expenditure business. There is no fit-out, no kitchen and no shopfront, but staff are paid weekly or fortnightly while local authority invoices settle in arrears, so the gap has to be funded.
Start Up Loans, run by a British Business Bank subsidiary, lends up to £25,000 per applicant at a fixed 7.5%, unsecured, to a maximum of £100,000 per business. Franchisors in the sector report that banks will lend a majority of the total investment against a business plan, subject to status.
Register the office as a location
For a home care agency the registered location is the administrative base from which staff are managed, not the homes where care is delivered. That keeps property costs low compared with every other sector in this series. Each location is registered separately and each carries its own annual fee, which matters for anyone planning a second territory.
Apply to the regulator
The application covers the provider, the registered manager and the nominated individual, and includes the statement of purpose, policies and evidence of fitness. Interviews with the proposed manager are normal.
No regulated care may be delivered until registration takes effect. In the other nations the regulator differs: the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Wales, and the RQIA in Northern Ireland, each with its own application process and standards.
Recruit, check and train the team
Every worker in contact with people using the service needs an enhanced DBS check including the adults’ barred list, and so does the registered manager. Right to work checks apply to every recruit.
Mandatory training must be completed before staff deliver care, not after. Recruitment is the operational constraint in this sector: an agency that cannot staff a package cannot accept it, however strong the enquiry flow.
Types of care business
- Domiciliary care agency : Domiciliary care agency : hourly visits in people’s homes, registered for personal care, the most common entry route, and the largest single category among the personal services franchises recruiting in the UK
- Live-in care : a worker based in the client’s home, higher value per client and a different recruitment problem
- Supported living : care delivered to people in their own tenancies, often for adults with a learning disability or autism, which carries additional CQC guidance
- Introductory or employment agency : matching workers to clients without managing the care. Outside CQC registration, and correspondingly outside the protections that come with it
- Companionship and home help : shopping, cleaning and company without personal care. Not a regulated activity, but the boundary is easy to cross by accident
How much does it cost to open a care agency in the UK?
No official UK average start-up cost exists, and there is no disclosure filing to consult, because the UK has none. What can be stated precisely is the regulator’s own fee, and what one named franchisor publishes about its own model.
| Item | Published figure |
|---|---|
| CQC application | No application fee. Registration is free to apply for |
| CQC annual regulatory fee, community social care | £239 + (number of service users × £54.305) per location, capped at £92,558 at 1,700 service users or more. Invoiced annually once registered |
| Franchised agency | Caremark: set-up fee £39,950 plus VAT, total investment from £120,000, minimum personal investment £36,000, working capital around £73,000, support fee 4.5% plus VAT of monthly turnover and a 1% marketing contribution, seven-year term |
| Independent agency | Not published: no official UK average exists |
The lines that move a start-up budget most are:
- Working capital : the largest line by some distance, funding payroll while local authority invoices settle in arrears
- The registered manager’s salary : payable from before registration, since the post must be filled to apply
- Recruitment and DBS checks : enhanced checks with the adults’ barred list for every care worker, repeated as the team turns over
- Training : mandatory, and completed before care is delivered rather than after
- Care management software, insurance and policies : the operational infrastructure the regulator expects to see in place
- Staff pay : the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026, plus employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 a year per employee, less the £10,500 Employment Allowance, and travel time between visits counts towards minimum wage
Good to know
Figures of around £1,522 circulate online as a CQC application fee. There is no such charge. GOV.UK states plainly that no application fee is payable for registration of a domiciliary care agency in England, and the CQC’s own fees guidance describes an annual regulatory fee, invoiced after registration takes effect, not a charge to apply. For community social care that fee is calculated as £239 plus £54.305 for each service user, at each location. A new agency supporting ten people pays a few hundred pounds a year. Any figure presented as a non-refundable application fee is describing somebody’s consultancy charge, not the regulator’s.
Care franchise opportunities in the UK
Franchising in the UK is governed by general contract law, which leaves the franchise agreement carrying the weight a disclosure filing carries elsewhere. There is no franchise statute, no register and no statutory pre-contract disclosure requirement, and the British Franchise Association’s Code of Ethics binds its voluntary members rather than the market. Care is unusual in that several franchisors publish their terms openly, which makes the sector easier to compare than most.
- Caremark : over 150 offices across the UK and Ireland. Its own costs page gives a £39,950 plus VAT set-up fee, total investment from £120,000, minimum personal investment of £36,000, working capital of around £73,000, an ongoing support fee of 4.5% plus VAT of monthly turnover with a 1% marketing contribution, and a seven-year term with a renewal option. It states that care experience is not required of the owner
- Home Instead, Right at Home, Bluebird Care and GoodOaks : the other established home care networks recruiting in the UK. Terms vary and each should be read on the franchisor’s own pages rather than on a directory listing
One point applies to every brand in this sector. The franchisor supplies the model, the systems and the brand, but it cannot hold the registration. The franchisee is the registered provider, the registered manager is the franchisee’s appointment, and the CQC rating attaches to the local business. Compliance is not delegable, and it is a sharper version of the division of responsibility that defines the model generally, set out in what a franchise is.
Editor’s tip
Care franchisors publish earnings guidance more readily than most sectors. Caremark’s own page states a break-even guide of around year one, a turnover ambition of £1 million within three years and net operating profit of 15% to 20% once established, and adds that the figures are guidance only and vary by territory. Read them as what they are: franchisor-provided projections, not audited results, with no UK filing against which to check them. The same page’s hard terms, the fee, the percentage and the contract length, are far more useful, because those are what the agreement will actually bind.
The practical difficulties operators report
- Registration refusal and delay : the CQC states that domiciliary care applications for personal care are the most likely to be delayed or refused, usually where the application is incomplete or the proposed manager’s experience does not match the service
- Finding a registered manager : the post must be filled to apply and paid before any turnover exists, and the candidate pool is the sector’s tightest constraint
- Council rates against wage costs : local authority commissioned hourly rates are set by the commissioner, while the wage floor is set by government, and the two do not move together
- Travel time and the minimum wage : time spent travelling between visits counts towards minimum wage calculations, which is a recurring source of underpayment findings in the sector
- Four regulators : an agency expanding beyond England registers again with the Care Inspectorate, Care Inspectorate Wales or the RQIA, under a different regime each time
The bottom line
A care agency is cheap to house and expensive to staff, which reverses the pattern of every other sector in this series. There is no fit-out, no lease premium and no application fee, but there is a registered manager on the payroll before the first invoice, a working capital gap funded by the provider, and a regulator that assesses named individuals and can say no. The published franchise route starts from around £120,000 all in, which can be compared against the other brands in the UK franchise directory. The independent route has no published figure, and its real cost is the months between appointing a manager and receiving registration.
Frequently asked questions about opening a care agency in the UK
In England, yes, if the agency provides personal care with ongoing direction or control of its workers. Carrying on that regulated activity without registration is a criminal offence. Agencies that only introduce care workers to clients, or supply staff to another registered provider, are exempt. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators and their own registration requirements.
Nothing to apply. There is no CQC application fee. Once registered, a community social care provider pays an annual regulatory fee calculated as £239 plus £54.305 for each service user, at each location, capped at £92,558. Figures circulating as a non-refundable application fee are not the regulator’s charge.
The owner does not need a care qualification, and franchisors in the sector state that care experience is not required of the franchise owner. The registered manager does. Regulation 7 requires that person to have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to manage the regulated activity, and the CQC assesses them individually as part of the application.
