How Much Does It Cost to Start a Home Care Agency in England?

There is no single price tag. The biggest costs (wages, an office and insurance) depend on where you are and how quickly you grow. What you can do is plan for three separate things:

• the fixed fees every new agency pays, most of them small
• the costs of getting ready to register and to deliver care safely
• the cash to pay your staff before the money for their work comes in

The third is the easiest to underestimate, so it has its own section below.

These are set by law or by the organisations that charge them, so you can budget for them closely. The figures below are correct as of October 2026.

• Your company: £100 to register a limited company online with Companies House, then £50 a year when you file your confirmation statement.
• The data protection fee: organisations that use personal information must pay the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) a fee unless they are exempt, and an agency that keeps care records or staff details on a computer or an app will not be. Most new agencies fall into tier 1 (no more than 10 staff, or a turnover of up to £632,000): £52 a year, or £47 by Direct Debit.
• DBS checks: from 5 October 2026 an enhanced check costs £41 (it was £49.50), and the optional DBS Update Service costs £15 a year. Most employers apply through an umbrella body, which may charge its own admin fee. Your registered manager needs an enhanced check countersigned by CQC, applied for through CQC's own service: it must be less than 12 months old when you apply, CQC cannot accept Update Service certificates for it, and CQC says it can take up to 60 working days. Your nominated individual needs an enhanced check too, and so does every care worker, including a check of the adults' barred list.
• CQC registration: there is no application fee. Once you are registered you pay an annual fee, which for a home care agency is worked out for each location: £239, plus about £54 for each person you support (counted over a 7-day period). That comes to about £510 a year if you support 5 people, or about £1,325 if you support 20. CQC says its 2019/20 fees scheme still applies until further notice.
• Employers' liability insurance: as soon as you employ anyone, the law requires cover of at least £5 million from an authorised insurer (there are only a few narrow exemptions), and you can be fined £2,500 for every day you are not properly insured. The premium depends on your insurer and the size of your team.

These costs vary the most, because they depend on choices you make.

• A registered manager: CQC registers the manager as well as the company, and expects someone with the right experience, qualifications and understanding of the regulations. If that is you, the cost is your time. If it is someone else, you will usually be paying a salary before the agency has any income.
• An office: CQC registers the place your agency is run from, and asks about it in your application, sometimes with evidence such as your landlord's permission. You need somewhere you can keep records secure and meet, train and supervise staff. Check that the lease allows this use before you sign.
• Insurance beyond the legal minimum: many agencies also take out public liability and professional indemnity cover, and councils often ask to see both before they award work.
• Policies, procedures and registration documents: CQC assesses whether your systems, processes and policies are likely to meet the regulations, so generic templates that don't match how you will work can hold your application back. You can write your own (free, but slow), buy a one-off pack (which you then have to keep up to date yourself), or subscribe to a library that is kept up to date for you.
• Training: your care workers need an induction and training before they work alone. The government's Learning and Development Support Scheme can pay back the cost of some eligible courses and qualifications if you keep an up-to-date account on the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), which is run by Skills for Care. Up to £10 million is available across England in 2026/27.
• Systems: you need a way to plan rotas, keep care plans and record medicines. Paper can work, but software makes it far easier to show CQC what happened, and when.

Most of your money will go on wages, so this is where your sums need to be right.

• The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 for workers aged 21 and over (£10.85 for those aged 18 to 20).
• Time spent travelling from one visit to the next counts as working time for the minimum wage. Travel between home and work does not.
• Employer's National Insurance is 15% of each employee's earnings above £5,000 a year (£96 a week). The Employment Allowance can cut your bill by up to £10,500 a year, but a company cannot claim it if its director is the only employee paid above that threshold.
• You must enrol eligible staff in a workplace pension and pay in at least 3% of their qualifying earnings.
• Workers with irregular hours, as many care workers have, build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours they work.
• Statutory Sick Pay is now paid from the first day of sickness, at £123.25 a week or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings if that is lower.

Put together, an hour of care costs you far more than the hourly wage. The Homecare Association, the trade body for home care providers, calculates a minimum price of £34.42 an hour for 2026/27 in England: the least it says a provider can charge while paying the National Living Wage, covering the legal costs of employment and running a compliant business. It also reports that most councils and NHS bodies pay well below its minimum price, so find out what your local council pays before you build your plans around council work.

One more change to plan for: since 22 July 2025, care workers have not been able to make new applications from overseas for Health and Care Worker visas. Care workers already in the UK on that visa can extend it or change employer, and people here on other visas can switch into the route until 22 July 2028, once they have worked legally for the sponsoring provider for at least three months. In England, only CQC-registered providers can sponsor care workers. In practice, plan to recruit locally.

Even a well-run new agency spends money for months before much comes in.

• Registration takes time: CQC says most applications take up to ten weeks to process, sometimes longer, and you cannot provide personal care until you are registered.
• Winning work takes time too, whether you approach your council, the NHS or private clients.
• Councils and other commissioners usually pay in arrears, after the care has been delivered, but your staff must still be paid on payday.

So before you start, write a cash-flow forecast for your first 12 months. For each month, list the money coming in (when you will actually be paid, not when you send the invoice) and the money going out (wages on payday, rent, insurance, software and fees). The lowest point of that forecast is the least cash you need to start with, and it is sensible to have more.

• Company registered and a business bank account open
• ICO data protection fee paid
• Employers' liability insurance in place before anyone starts work
• Registered manager chosen, and their CQC-countersigned DBS check applied for early (CQC says it can take up to 60 working days)
• Office agreed, with the landlord's permission if you need it
• Policies and procedures that describe how your agency will actually work
• Safe recruitment ready: enhanced DBS, references, a full employment history and right to work checks
• A 12-month cash-flow forecast, with money set aside for the gap before income arrives

When you are ready to apply, read our guides to registering with CQC and preparing for your registration interview.

We built Care Anchor Compliance for agencies at this stage, when every pound matters. You pay monthly, so the cost is spread out: plans start at £299 a month per branch, with a 12-month minimum term and a one-off £150 set-up fee per branch.

Every plan includes our library of policies, procedures, forms, registration documents and guides, written for home care, personalised with your agency's details and reviewed when the rules change, with guidance on writing your statement of purpose. Every plan also tracks your staff files (DBS, right to work and training) and warns you before anything expires, and the Growth plan adds the rota and the care visit app with medication rounds. Tell us about your agency and we will arrange a demo at a time that suits you.