A major new national benchmarking report has revealed that whilst demand for care remains strong, many care home operators are focusing their investment on one side of growth, either generating enquiries or converting them, when the operators pulling ahead are doing both well.
The Care Growth Index, produced by Prosperwell in partnership with Care England, Knight Frank and NatWest, is the first large-scale study of sales and marketing performance across UK care homes. Drawing on data from more than 100 operators representing over 400 homes and more than 21,000 beds, it examines how providers generate enquiries, turn interest into residents and sustain occupancy over time.
The findings suggest that occupancy depends on two engines working together: the demand engine, how well a home generates enquiries, and the conversion engine, how well it converts them into residents. The report frames these as two interconnected growth engines, demand and conversion, and finds that the strongest-performing operators are distinguished on both counts. They invest deliberately in marketing channels, and they run disciplined enquiry management, follow-up and sales processes behind them.
Findings include:
- Occupancy is high, but unevenly spread. A meaningful minority of homes sit below the point where the economics start to work against them.
- Private demand is growing. Far more operators report rising private occupancy than falling, but how well they capture it varies widely.
- The viewing is where the gap opens. The highest performers pull away not at the enquiry stage but at the point families walk through the door.
- A handful of habits separate the best from the rest. Senior ownership of sales, persistent follow-up and formal training are consistently linked to stronger conversion, and stacking them pays off most.
- Not all channels do the same job. The channels that generate the most enquiries are not always the ones that deliver the most residents.
- Investment is going up, but mostly on one side. Most operators plan to spend more next year, and the majority are pointing it at demand rather than conversion.
The report suggests that the largest gains come from investing in both engines, and that where either is underdeveloped, occupancy and financial sustainability suffer.
Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, said:
“Occupancy remains one of the most important indicators of sustainability in adult social care, but this report demonstrates that occupancy growth depends on both generating demand and converting it. Providers are increasingly operating in a competitive environment where visibility, commercial capability, responsiveness and customer experience all matter.
The Care Growth Index provides incredibly valuable insight into the practical actions providers can take to strengthen occupancy performance, improve sustainability and ultimately ensure more people can access high-quality care when they need it.”
Tobi Alli-Usman, Founder & Managing Director, Prosperwell, said:
“We are incredibly proud to launch the first Care Growth Index and give the sector a meaningful benchmark for sales and marketing performance. This report demonstrates that occupancy growth is not a matter of marketing or sales alone, but of how effectively providers bring the two together: generating enquiries through the channels they can direct, and converting those enquiries into residents.
The report identifies the behaviours, processes and leadership practices that consistently separate higher-performing providers from the rest of the market. Our aim is to give care providers a practical, evidence-based roadmap for sustainable growth.”
The full Care Growth Index report will be available for general release from Prosperwell and Care England on 29th September 2026.
