To increase care home occupancy, you need more of the right families to book a visit. Many of those families start online, and your website is one of the first things they check. Getting the basics right there, starting with your CQC rating and fees, gives more of them a reason to book.
Most advice on how to market a care home covers open days and paid advertising. This guide is about the website, because those channels send families to it too. It covers the latest occupancy figures, what an empty bed costs, how families choose, ten website fixes, typical costs and a 15-minute self-check. It's written for care homes in England regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
What is the average care home occupancy rate in the UK?
About 87% of care home beds in England were occupied in mid-August 2026. The latest GOV.UK adult social care provider statistics put occupancy at 86.8% in the week ending 14 August 2026, with 10.2% of beds empty and ready to admit.
The East Midlands is bottom of the table: 82.9% occupied, with 13.4% of beds vacant and admittable, the most of any region. London is highest at 90.9%. If your home is in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire or Lincolnshire, you're competing for families in the region with the most spare beds.
You'll also see a higher figure, 88.7%, from Knight Frank's 2025 trading review. That's a year-long average (April 2024 to March 2025) across 100,000+ beds, mostly run by larger operators, so it isn't directly comparable with the official weekly figure.
Demand isn't shrinking. LaingBuisson values the older people's care home market at £27bn and expects demand to grow by 37,000 beds over the next decade. A home below its regional average is most likely losing families to other homes nearby.
What does one empty bed cost your care home?
At Knight Frank's 2025 average fees, one empty bed costs between about £67,500 and £85,000 a year in lost revenue. The working is the weekly fee × 52 weeks:
Bed type (Knight Frank 2025) | Average weekly fee | Lost revenue per empty bed, per year |
|---|---|---|
All care types | £1,298 | about £67,500 |
Private pay | £1,461 | about £76,000 |
Private pay, nursing | £1,638 | about £85,000 |
These are UK averages from larger operators, so treat them as illustrative and swap in your own fee.
A worked example: a 40-bed home at 83% occupancy (the East Midlands average) has about 33 residents. Reaching the England average of 87% means two more. At £1,298 to £1,461 a week, that's roughly £135,000 to £152,000 a year.
Self-funders carry most of the value. They are 45% of residents but 55% of market value (LaingBuisson, April 2026), and Knight Frank found margins of 39.4% at mainly private-pay homes against 19.7% at mainly council-funded ones. When one extra admission is worth many times what a website costs, the website is the wrong place to economise.
How do families choose a care home in 2026?
Families shortlist online but decide on a visit, so your website's job is to get that visit booked.
Visiting is what decides it for most people. In CQC's 2018 survey of 1,000 adults, 72% said visiting the home was the biggest influence on their choice and 44% named the CQC rating. Just over half (52%) put choosing a care home among the three most stressful decisions of their life.
Reviews count, and adult children write over half of them. In carehome.co.uk's July 2026 report, 76% of people rated reviews as extremely or very important; daughters wrote 38% of reviews on the site and sons 16.5%. Families also take their time. Referral platform Lottie found 77% took more than two weeks to decide, though it doesn't publish a sample size.
Directories are the most common starting point. A 2026 survey of 1,000 people by Care England and Log my Care found around 55% used directories, 40% used online search and 38% asked friends or family. Only 3% found arranging care straightforward. AI tools are now part of the search as well: 36.7% of UK consumers used one for local search in the past month, and 43% then went to the business's own website (Yext, June 2026, 600 people, not specific to care).
10 website fixes that increase care home occupancy
These ten fixes are the website side of a care home marketing strategy. They cover how to get more care home enquiries from families who are already looking.
1. Display your CQC rating where families (and CQC) expect it
Yes, care homes in England must display their CQC rating on their website. Regulation 20A requires the latest rating, the date it was given, CQC's web address and where to find the report, shown legibly and conspicuously. CQC's guidance says to update it within 21 days of a new report. CQC can issue a £100 fixed penalty notice, or prosecute without a warning notice first. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says the rating belongs on your home page, and that showing an older, better rating than your latest one is misleading. Use CQC's free ratings widget, which updates automatically.
2. Publish your fees and what they include
Yes, publish your fees. The CMA's consumer law advice for care homes expects the main information families need to be no more than one click from your home page: total weekly fees for self-funders by room and care type, mandatory charges, realistic costs of unavoidable extras, deposits, whether top-ups may apply, and your standard terms. This is guidance on how consumer law applies. Since April 2025, though, the CMA can fine businesses directly, up to 10% of global turnover. Its first fine for breaking consumer law under those powers was £4.2m against the AA (AA Driving School and BSM) in April 2026, over a £3 booking fee left out of the headline price (Mayer Brown). We haven't found a case against a care home so far. Families want clear pricing too: 95% of Lottie's respondents preferred all-inclusive fees.
3. Make "book a visit" the main call to action
Seven in ten people in CQC's survey said visiting was the biggest influence on their choice, so every page should make booking a visit easy. Put a "Book a visit" button in the header and a click-to-call number on every page, and keep the booking form short enough to fill in on a phone. Show visiting times and parking. Make the phone number large: 29% of people aged 75 and over rarely or never use the internet (Age UK, 2025). Answer web enquiries the same working day.
4. Show real rooms, gardens and people
Use real photos of your rooms, lounges, dining room and garden, plus a short video tour. Stock images tell families nothing about your home. Gardens matter: 84% of Lottie's respondents rated a garden as the facility they valued most. Add a news or activities page and update it monthly. Care Inspections UK's analysis of CQC data found that 5,429 of 13,475 care homes in England (about 40%) hadn't had a full inspection since February 2021, as of March 2026. Your website may show families more about life in your home today than your last inspection report does. Get written consent before showing residents in photos.
5. Bring your reviews onto your own site
Show recent reviews on your own website as well as on directories. Reviews matter to 76% of people surveyed, but 64% of homes on carehome.co.uk score 9.0 or more, so a high score alone doesn't stand out. In carehome.co.uk's own 2026 research, homes named as "best" by AI tools averaged 74 reviews, against a national average of 26. Embed your carehome.co.uk and Google reviews, and ask every family for one at a natural moment, such as a month after a resident moves in.
6. Write plain-English answers Google and AI tools can quote
AI tools recommend care homes from what they can read, so put the main facts about your home in plain text. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode have no extra requirements beyond normal search, but they may run several related searches at once. A page that answers a specific question, such as what dementia care costs at your home, has more chances to appear. Write your care types, bed numbers, fees, CQC rating, address, visiting times and funding options as text on the page, and keep them identical to your directory listings. Avoid putting them only in images or PDFs. In carehome.co.uk's own study, the site was cited in 20% of AI answers about the best care homes, so directories feed AI tools too. NexusStudio builds care home websites with these facts in plain text for this reason. Nobody can guarantee a ChatGPT recommendation, though.
7. Build a page for each care type and your area (care home SEO)
Care home SEO starts with one page per service. Separate pages for residential, nursing, dementia and respite care each answer a different search, and each can explain who the care suits and what it costs. Add a page about your town and what's nearby. In Mediahawk's 2023 call-tracking data, Google organic search produced 45% of care home phone calls against 18% from paid ads. Complete your Google Business Profile with the same name, address, phone number and photos as your website.
8. Design for older eyes and stressed adult children
Your site has to work for an older relative on a tablet and for a daughter checking it on her phone at lunchtime. 67% of over-65s used a smartphone at the end of 2024 (Ofcom figures, published by Age UK), so test on a small screen. Use body text of at least 16px, strong contrast, buttons big enough to tap and a simple menu. Keep fees and contact details one tap from every page, and leave out pop-ups and auto-playing video. Following the WCAG accessibility guidelines is good practice. It isn't a specific legal duty for private care homes, but it makes the site easier for everyone to use.
9. Add a careers page that recruits locally
A careers page that attracts local applicants helps keep shifts covered. Adult social care in England had a 6.2% vacancy rate and about 96,000 vacancies in 2025/26, and international recruitment fell to around 30,000 (Skills for Care, June 2026). Staff turnover in the independent sector was 24.7% in 2024/25 (Learning Disability Today). With fewer overseas recruits, local applicants matter more. List live vacancies with pay and hours, show real staff, explain training and progression, and keep the form short enough to finish on a phone.
10. Track every enquiry back to its source
Track where each enquiry comes from, or you won't know which fixes are working. Mediahawk's 2023 data showed care home website visitors up 8% while the share who phoned fell 5.5%, and the time from enquiry to admission grew 28%. Its spring 2026 figures show the visitor-to-call ratio down a further 7.5% (Care England). More traffic doesn't automatically mean more residents. Set up form and call tracking so each enquiry is tagged by source, then compare visits and admissions by source each month. This is the measurement side of care home digital marketing, and it tells you where to spend next.
How much does care home website design cost in the UK?
Care home marketing agency care.marketing puts a care home website at £3,000 to £6,000 for a single home and £6,000 to £12,000 for a group in its 2026 guide. Its service page quotes £2,000 to £5,000 for a standard 5 to 8 page site. A carehome.co.uk listing costs £82.50 to £165 plus VAT a month, roughly £990 to £1,980 a year (Whito). Few agencies publish prices, so ask for a fixed quote that includes hosting, and check that you will own the site once it's built.
At the all-care average fee of £1,298 a week, one empty bed loses about £5,600 a month, which is close to the top of the single-home price range. You can read how NexusStudio builds care home websites on our care home website design page.
Template, directory listing or bespoke site?
A directory listing is worth having: families use directories more than any other channel, and AI tools cite them. But you don't own it, and your listing sits next to your competitors'.
A template site is cheap and quick, but it often needs extra work to cover the basics, such as a live CQC widget or a fees page one click from home. A bespoke site costs more up front. It belongs to you and can be built around booking visits. Judge any option on whether it keeps you compliant and whether you own the enquiries it brings in.
Where a family portal or app fits
Many homes already have a family app through their care-record software, such as Person Centred Software's PCS Family or Nourish's family portal. Don't pay for another. Link to it from your website, or add a simple relatives' area with news and event dates. It reassures families comparing homes, but it won't fill beds on its own.
What should a care home website include? A 15-minute self-check
A care home website should include your CQC rating, your fees, an easy way to book a visit, real photos, reviews, a page per care type and contact details that work on a phone. Open your own site and work down this table. Anything your site doesn't have goes on your list of fixes.
Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
CQC rating, its date and a report link on the home page | Required by Regulation 20A; the CMA expects it on the home page |
Weekly fees by room and care type, one click from home | The CMA expects it |
Standard terms, deposits and extras clearly signposted | Part of the information the CMA lists |
"Book a visit" button and click-to-call on every page | Visiting is the biggest single influence on choice |
Real photos and a video tour | Families can see the home before they visit |
Recent reviews shown on your own site | 76% of people surveyed rate reviews as important |
A separate page for each care type | Each one answers a different search |
Main facts in plain text, matching your directory listings | Google and AI tools can read and repeat them |
Large text, strong contrast, works on a phone | Older readers and busy adult children both use it |
Careers page with live vacancies and pay | Recruits locally while overseas hiring falls |
Enquiry tracking for forms and calls | Shows which fixes are bringing in visits |
Get a free care home website check
To find out which of these fixes would help increase care home occupancy at your home, ask NexusStudio for a free care home website check. We'll review your site against the self-check above, including CQC display, fees, visit booking, mobile use and how readable it is for AI tools, then send you a short report on what to fix first. There's no obligation.
Request your free care home website check, or read about our care home website design.
Sources
GOV.UK: Adult social care provider statistics, England, quarterly update to August 2026
Knight Frank: Care Homes Trading Performance Review 2025
LaingBuisson: care home market reaches £27bn (April 2026)
CQC: Regulation 20A, requirement to display performance assessments
CQC: How providers must display ratings
CMA: Care homes consumer law advice for providers (December 2021)
Mayer Brown: the CMA's new consumer enforcement powers in action (August 2026)
CQC: Choosing care is one of life's most stressful experiences (2018)
carehome.co.uk: How care home reviews are shaping choice (July 2026)
Lottie: What makes a good care home experience survey
Care England: how families find and choose care (2026)
Yext: How UK consumers navigate local search in the age of AI (June 2026)
Google Search Central: AI features and your website
Age UK: Internet use statistics (July 2025)
Local Government Lawyer: more than 5,000 care homes not inspected in five years (May 2026)
Mediahawk: care home marketing trends (2023)
Care England: generating more care home enquiries (Mediahawk spring 2026 data)
Skills for Care: size and structure of the adult social care workforce (June 2026)
Learning Disability Today: vacancy and turnover rates continue to fall
care.marketing: how much does care home marketing cost (July 2026)
Whito: care home marketing costs
Person Centred Software: residents and relatives