14,878
Registered care homes
Data
The Care Home Market Index
England's registered care home market in one page: 14,878 homes and around 485,000 beds, broken down by county, rating and operator. Refreshed with every monthly CQC data release and free to cite with attribution.
Written and reviewed by Matt Lenzie Founder & Principal Broker · 25 years arranging care home finance · Reviewed June 2026
485,000
Registered beds
7,209
Distinct providers
83%
Rated Good or Outstanding
The Care Home Market Index tracks every active registered care home in England from the Care Quality Commission's care directory, joined to our market layer of fees, values and yields. It exists because the sector's basic numbers, how many homes, how many beds, who runs them and how they are rated, are surprisingly hard to read in one place. We refresh it with each monthly CQC release. Journalists, analysts and operators are welcome to cite it with attribution and a link, and the county table is downloadable as a CSV.
As of 03 June 2026, CQC registers 14,878 care homes in England with around 485,000 beds across 7,209 providers. Of the homes with a current rating, 83% stand at Good or Outstanding. Fragmentation remains the sector's defining feature: thousands of providers operate a single home, which is what keeps the consolidation and finance market busy.
Ratings
CQC ratings across England
The rating mix of every rated care home in the current snapshot.
| CQC rating | Homes | Share of rated |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | 609 | 4% |
| Good | 10,672 | 78% |
| Requires improvement | 2,234 | 16% |
| Inadequate | 122 | 1% |
County league table
Registered bed stock by county
Counties we map, ranked by registered beds. Each links to its market page and town directory.
| County | Homes | Beds | Nursing | Good or better |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greater London | 1,211 | 35,397 | 376 | 90% |
| West Midlands | 806 | 23,304 | 219 | 75% |
| Greater Manchester | 579 | 18,914 | 182 | 81% |
| Kent | 561 | 17,505 | 152 | 79% |
| Sussex | 592 | 17,444 | 186 | 83% |
| West Yorkshire | 517 | 17,144 | 152 | 77% |
| Hampshire | 505 | 15,962 | 155 | 84% |
| Lancashire | 499 | 15,357 | 124 | 83% |
| Surrey | 374 | 14,318 | 166 | 85% |
| Essex | 484 | 14,181 | 98 | 83% |
| Merseyside | 362 | 12,575 | 136 | 74% |
| South Yorkshire | 362 | 11,997 | 105 | 84% |
| Devon | 447 | 11,962 | 94 | 86% |
| Nottinghamshire | 354 | 10,829 | 116 | 84% |
| Lincolnshire | 331 | 10,801 | 83 | 79% |
| Tyne and Wear | 281 | 10,673 | 115 | 91% |
| Staffordshire | 337 | 10,593 | 101 | 77% |
| Norfolk | 315 | 10,079 | 58 | 66% |
| Cheshire | 234 | 9,694 | 118 | 76% |
| Derbyshire | 286 | 9,093 | 99 | 81% |
| Somerset | 289 | 8,997 | 89 | 92% |
| Hertfordshire | 228 | 8,712 | 70 | 79% |
| Leicestershire | 278 | 8,605 | 49 | 81% |
| North Yorkshire | 212 | 8,033 | 67 | 87% |
| Dorset | 233 | 7,984 | 61 | 94% |
| Berkshire | 213 | 7,418 | 70 | 80% |
| Suffolk | 175 | 7,375 | 64 | 81% |
| Cambridgeshire | 180 | 7,146 | 61 | 90% |
| Northamptonshire | 208 | 6,280 | 58 | 78% |
| Worcestershire | 167 | 6,263 | 62 | 83% |
| Gloucestershire | 206 | 6,245 | 75 | 89% |
| East Riding of Yorkshire | 189 | 6,215 | 29 | 75% |
| Wiltshire | 201 | 6,207 | 56 | 89% |
| Oxfordshire | 133 | 6,183 | 80 | 88% |
| Bristol | 190 | 5,979 | 70 | 94% |
| County Durham | 157 | 5,782 | 62 | 93% |
| Warwickshire | 145 | 5,336 | 49 | 81% |
| Buckinghamshire | 152 | 5,114 | 52 | 76% |
| Bedfordshire | 169 | 4,778 | 39 | 78% |
| Shropshire | 133 | 4,278 | 45 | 77% |
| Cornwall | 166 | 4,080 | 36 | 82% |
| Cumbria | 109 | 3,507 | 30 | 89% |
| Northumberland | 73 | 2,754 | 28 | 90% |
Counties reflect our geographic mapping of the CQC directory; a small share of homes resolve to county level only. Download the table as CSV.
Operators
The largest care home groups by beds
Operator concentration at the top of the market. Every group links to its full portfolio.
| Operator | Homes | Beds | Counties | Good or better |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Care UK Care Services Limited | 219 | 14,905 | 37 | 92% |
| Barchester Healthcare Homes Limited | 209 | 13,221 | 40 | 89% |
| Care UK Community Partnerships Ltd | 100 | 6,989 | 24 | 93% |
| Anchor Hanover Group | 112 | 5,956 | 26 | 85% |
| HC-One Limited | 109 | 5,509 | 20 | 83% |
| Willowbrook Healthcare Limited | 48 | 4,308 | 17 | 88% |
| Scarborough Hall Limited | 70 | 4,302 | 30 | 100% |
| Runwood Homes Limited | 55 | 3,881 | 9 | 82% |
| Sanctuary Care Limited | 76 | 3,839 | 24 | 95% |
| Methodist Homes | 63 | 3,251 | 32 | 90% |
| WT UK Opco 4 Limited | 37 | 2,961 | 18 | 96% |
| The Orders Of St. John Care Trust | 54 | 2,892 | 6 | 91% |
| HC-One No.1 Limited | 34 | 2,645 | 18 | 79% |
| Prime Life Limited | 51 | 2,002 | 9 | 80% |
| Aria Healthcare Group LTD | 35 | 1,982 | 18 | 89% |
Methodology and licence
The index is built from the CQC "care directory with filters" bulk data, produced 03 June 2026, filtered to active locations registered as care homes, joined to service-type and specialism data, and resolved to our county and town geography. Bed counts are registered beds, not occupied beds. Ratings are current published ratings, including inherited ones. Contains public sector information from the Care Quality Commission, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Cite as: Care Home Market Index, Care Homes Finance, 03 June 2026. A link back to this page is appreciated and helps us keep the index free. For the market context behind the numbers, see our insights hub, transactions and yields, and the development pipeline.
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