Blogs · July 2026

How much does a care home cost per week in the UK?

About £1,594 a week for the average self-funder against about £1,225 for local-authority funding. Here is what that gap means for the enquiry that lands on your desk, and what CQC expects you to be able to show.

The short answer: about £1,594 a week for the average self-funder, against about £1,225 for a local-authority-funded resident (LaingBuisson, 35th edition, 2025). A separate market view puts the average at about £1,298 a week (carehome.co.uk, September 2025). Care home fees are not price-regulated the way dental costs are. The gap is simply large, public, and usually the substance of the first call you take.

How much does a care home cost per week in the UK?

You already know these numbers. The reason they are worth writing down is what they do to an enquiry.

Why do care homes charge self-funders more?

Because local-authority rates are negotiated and capped, and the gap between the two has to come from somewhere. That is the structural answer and it is not controversial.

The operational answer is more useful to you: a self-funder enquiry is worth several hundred pounds a week more than a placement you are commissioned to fill, it arrives at an unpredictable hour, and it opens with a question about money that you are very often the only person able to answer.

Which puts the enquiry that decides an admission on the one person who cannot be in two places at once.

Why does an unanswered enquiry matter so much to a home?

Because the asset is perishable. An empty bed earns nothing and cannot be sold later. There is no catching up on a week of an empty room the way you can catch up on a delayed invoice. It is one of the most perishable assets in healthcare.

So the arithmetic of a missed enquiry is not the cost of ringing someone back. It is:

• A self-funder rings while you are on the floor, mid-handover, or in a review.
• Nobody who is free can answer the fee question, so it becomes a message.
• By the time you ring back, they have rung the home down the road, which could.
• The room stays empty, and every week it stays empty is gone for good.

None of that is a marketing problem. The enquiry already came to you.

What does CQC actually want to see?

This is where care differs from the rest of the sector, and it is worth being precise about it.

For dental practices the pressure is a price rule: the General Dental Council requires practices to give patients clear information about costs, and patients are entitled to know what treatment will cost before it starts. For veterinary practices it is a live consultation. For you it is neither. It is the evidence trail.

Being able to show what was said, to whom, and when. That is a different reason to care about how the phone is answered, and it is a reason the other three do not have.

Which makes the record of an enquiry conversation part of your regulatory position, not just your admissions pipeline.

Do vets have to publish their prices?

Not currently, and most do not. Worth watching, because it is the clearest signal of where price transparency is heading across regulated care.

The Competition and Markets Authority looked at veterinary practices and found that most do not publish their prices, and that most clients did not receive written pricing. Those are the CMA's own findings, not numbers it is repeating from somebody else.

And it is live. The CMA published a price transparency update on 18 November 2025 and opened a consultation in July 2026 which closes on 23 September 2026. One remedy on the table is a required written estimate for treatment over £500.

A regulator has decided that writing the price down, and being able to show you wrote it down, is worth mandating. If that lands next door, it is not a leap to where the thinking goes for a sector CQC already asks for an evidence trail from.

Are NHS dental bands still used across the UK?

No. Wales abolished the band system on 1 April 2026.

Included because it is a useful warning about your own published material. A whole profession's price language changed on a known date, and most copy describing NHS dental charges as "Band 1, Band 2, Band 3" as though it applies across the UK is now wrong in at least one nation, because nobody went back and checked.

Your fee schedule, your brochure and your website move too. The question is whether what reception quotes on a Tuesday matches them.

What nobody has measured, and what it costs you

Nobody has published a measurement of what UK practices actually tell people about price. Not for dentistry, where the duty is explicit. Not for care. The last serious UK look we could find at dental price transparency was the Office of Fair Trading, in 2012.

To be precise about the claim: we are not saying nobody publishes fees. We are saying nobody has measured it, which is different and defensible.

Here is the practical consequence for a home. If nobody has measured it, nobody is measuring you either. Which means the only record of what you quoted a self-funder is whatever was said on the call, by whoever picked up, on the day. For a sector where the regulator asks you to show what was said, to whom, and when, that is not a position anyone would choose to be in.

What we cut, and why

This list is here because on this subject the bad numbers are more available than the good ones. If a supplier quotes you any of the following, ask them who counted, and when.

• A lifetime-value figure for a care home enquiry. It is derivable, and our earlier material has derived one. But it rests on an average length of stay from a 2011 study, and stacking a 2025 fee on a 2011 duration produces a number that looks precise and is not. If you want to build it for your own home, use your own occupancy and your own stay data.
• The dental price figures that float around this subject. They sit on a CMA page, which is why they look authoritative, but the CMA's own wording is that "independent sources suggest" them. The CMA is repeating, not producing, and will publish its own in 2027. A figure on a regulator's page is not automatically the regulator's figure.
• A GDC quote that would have been the best line we had. The page returns a rendered shell that does not contain it, and the standards PDF returns a server error. Not used until someone opens the document and sees it.
• Any US answering-service statistic on missed calls. Not UK, not comparable, widely recycled.
• "Band 1/2/3" framing. Wrong in Wales since 1 April 2026.

Can an AI agent answer the fee question?

Yes, from your own published fees, consistently, at the hour the enquiry actually arrives, without you coming off the floor to do it. And everything is on the record, which for a home under CQC is arguably the whole point rather than a side benefit.

What it will not do:

• Quote a fee that is not in its knowledge base. No inference, no "usually around". If the figure is not there, it says a person will confirm.
• Give clinical advice. It stops and hands to a person.
• Decide whether someone is vulnerable. It flags and hands over. That judgement stays with your team.

And the honest warnings. If your fees genuinely cannot be written down, do not start: an agent reading a stale schedule will confidently quote a rate you no longer charge. If you have no beds, more answered enquiries is not a win. And if you have someone on the desk who knows every family by name, that is worth more than any automation. Protect it.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Average self-funder fee about £1,594 a week against about £1,225 for local-authority funding. LaingBuisson, Care of Older People UK Market Report, 35th edition, 2025. https://www.laingbuisson.com/shop/care-homes-for-older-people-uk-market-report-35ed/
• Average fee about £1,298 a week. carehome.co.uk, September 2025. https://www.carehome.co.uk/advice/care-home-fees-and-costs-how-much-do-you-pay
• The evidence trail expectation: showing what was said, to whom, and when. Care Quality Commission, single assessment framework. https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-regulation/providers/assessment/single-assessment-framework
• Most vet practices do not publish prices; most clients did not receive written pricing; price transparency update 18 November 2025; consultation open July 2026, closing 23 September 2026; proposed £500 written-estimate threshold. Competition and Markets Authority, veterinary market investigation. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/veterinary-services-market-investigation
• GDC standard 2.4, and the patient entitlement to know costs before treatment starts. General Dental Council, Standards for the Dental Team. https://standards.gdc-uk.org/pages/principle2/principle2
• Wales abolished the NHS dental band system on 1 April 2026. Welsh Government. https://www.gov.wales/nhs-dental-charges
• The last serious UK look at dental price transparency we could find. Office of Fair Trading, dentistry market study, 2012. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20140402142426/http://www.oft.gov.uk/OFTwork/markets-work/dentistry/