Care homes are among the most energy-hungry small businesses in the UK, and they are energy-hungry for reasons you cannot design away. Residents are sedentary and often cannot tell you when they are cold, so heating holds 22 to 24 degrees around the clock. Hot water is stored above 60 degrees because legionella control does not bend around a tariff. The laundry runs seven days a week. The kitchen serves three meals plus snacks. Corridor lighting, nurse call, door access, CCTV, lifts and pressure-relief mattress pumps have no realistic off switch at 3am.
That leaves the contract rate as the lever with the most travel in it, and it is the lever most homes never pull. There are roughly 16,500 care homes across the UK, and the large majority are independent single-site or small-group operators who hold their own supply and renew by letter. That is exactly the profile a supplier can roll over quietly.
The short version
- CIBSE TM46 benchmarks long-term residential buildings at 420 kWh of fossil-thermal heat per square metre a year, against 120 for a general office and 330 for a hotel.
- Heating is usually about 60 per cent of a care home's energy use, with hot water another 12 to 18 per cent.
- A typical 20-bed home is often quoted at around 395,000 kWh a year across both fuels, roughly the same as 18 average houses.
- Out-of-contract, deemed and rollover rates typically run 30 to 50 per cent above a negotiated fixed price.
- Businesses that switch with us save 40 per cent on average, typically 30 to 50 per cent, and more if they are coming off out-of-contract or deemed rates.
Why the bill looks the way it does
Most business energy advice assumes a trading pattern: a shop opens, a kitchen fires up for service, an office empties at six. A care home has no such shape. Its electricity profile is a flat, stubborn baseload that never drops far, with laundry and kitchen peaks stacked on top. That matters commercially, because a flat 24-hour load is not what a standard small-business quote is priced for.
On the gas side, space heating dominates. Boilers and radiators serving a home at 22 to 24 degrees, day and night, typically account for 250,000 to 500,000 kWh a year, which at 7p per kWh is roughly £17,500 to £35,000 of the bill on its own. Stored hot water and secondary circulation for assisted baths and wet rooms add another 90,000 to 180,000 kWh.
On the electricity side, the on-site laundry is the load owners underestimate most. A commercial washer-extractor plus a vented tumble dryer can take 5 to 10 kWh on a single drying cycle, and there are several cycles a day per floor once continence care, bedding and personal clothing are counted. Add a catering kitchen with a combi oven, dishwasher and walk-in refrigeration, 24-hour corridor and en-suite lighting, nurse call, door access, CCTV, a fire panel, a passenger lift, ceiling hoists, profiling beds and mattress pumps, and the electricity baseload rarely falls below a floor you could measure at 4am.
The picture shifts by setting. Nursing homes carry clinical dependency on top: sluice room bedpan washer-disinfectors running hot cycles all day, more assisted bathing, more mattress pumps. Dementia specialist homes are essentially a residential or nursing home with the overnight setback removed, plus wayfinding and circadian lighting running through the night and secure door and wander-management systems drawing continuously. Supported living services and children's homes look nothing like a care home on paper and a lot like one on the meter: ordinary houses heated all day because people are home all day, each with its own boiler, its own pair of meters and its own standing charges.
Typical annual usage and bills by setting
The figures below are the published benchmark ranges we use across the care sector pages. They are typical and estimated, drawn from CIBSE TM46 intensities and published sector data, not quotes. Bill figures assume 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year in standing charges per fuel.
| Setting | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Children's home, 2 to 5 young people | 9,000 to 96,000 kWh | 35,000 to 330,000 kWh | £5,400 to £51,500 |
| Day nursery or pre-school | 12,000 to 90,000 kWh | 60,000 to 450,000 kWh | £8,000 to £55,000 |
| Supported living, cluster of houses | 21,000 to 132,000 kWh | 72,000 to 432,000 kWh | £12,500 to £72,000 |
| Extra-care scheme, communal supply | 27,000 to 128,000 kWh | 210,000 to 960,000 kWh | £22,200 to £99,900 |
| Residential care home, 15 to 60 beds | 40,000 to 150,000 kWh | 180,000 to 750,000 kWh | £23,300 to £90,700 |
| Dementia specialist home | 70,000 to 240,000 kWh | 300,000 to 1,140,000 kWh | £39,200 to £140,500 |
| Nursing home, commonly 30 to 70 beds | 78,000 to 266,000 kWh | 330,000 to 1,260,000 kWh | £43,300 to £155,400 |
Work an example through. Take a 40-bed residential home sitting mid-range at 90,000 kWh of electricity and 450,000 kWh of gas. At 25p and 7p that is £22,500 plus £31,500, and two standing charges add about £730, so roughly £54,700 a year. A typical switching outcome of 30 to 50 per cent on a bill that size is about £16,400 to £27,350. Those are estimates based on typical UK business energy spend and published market rates, not on customer records, and your figure depends on the rates you hold now.
The contract traps that matter in care
Out-of-contract and deemed rates
When a fixed deal ends and nothing replaces it, the supply does not stop. You move onto out-of-contract or deemed rates, which market analysis puts 30 to 50 per cent above a negotiated fixed price. There is no price cap on business energy, so nothing external pulls that number back down. This is where the largest savings come from. Businesses that switch with us save 40 per cent on average, typically 30 to 50 per cent, and more if you are on out-of-contract or deemed rates. See how we estimate.
The rollover you agreed to by not replying
Rollovers are the classic care home trap, because the letter arrives in the same post as everything else a registered manager is dealing with. Ofgem rules introduced in 2024 give you a 30-day window from the start of a rollover to leave without an exit fee, so it is worth telling us your end date even if you think you have missed it.
Standing charges multiplied across properties
This one bites supported living providers, children's home operators and small groups hardest. Standing charges of roughly £365 a year per fuel per meter mean ten properties carry about £7,300 in fixed charges before anyone boils a kettle. Scattered renewal dates make it worse: across a portfolio there is almost always at least one house sitting on deemed rates, and a property taken on mid-year lands on deemed rates from day one.
Being priced as a generic small business
A care home with an AMR or smart meter has data that proves how flat its overnight load is. Ask your supplier for half-hourly readings and look at the 2am to 6am floor. In a nursing or dementia home that floor is high, and it is the strongest argument you have for a contract priced on your real load shape rather than on a generic small-business profile. Larger sites may also sit near the threshold where half-hourly settlement applies, which changes how the contract should be built.
Seven changes worth making to the building
None of these touch resident comfort, which is the only test that matters in a regulated service. Impacts are rough estimates from the benchmark figures above.
- Lag the secondary hot water circulation loop and time the pump. Storing at 60 degrees is non-negotiable, but poorly lagged pipework with a pump on a 24-hour timer burns gas all night for nothing. Hot water is 12 to 18 per cent of the bill, so a slice of that is worth chasing.
- LED and presence sensing on corridors, stairwells and en-suites. A fitting drawing 36W swapped for a 12W LED saves 24W over 8,760 hours, about 210 kWh or roughly £53 a year at 25p. Multiply by every fitting that never goes off. Payback is far shorter here than in a shop or an office.
- Get the laundry down by one drying cycle a day. Full loads and a higher spin speed leave less residual moisture, so dryers run shorter. At 5 to 10 kWh a cycle, one fewer cycle a day is 1,825 to 3,650 kWh, roughly £450 to £900 a year at 25p.
- Zone the heating away from resident areas. Offices, storerooms, laundries and circulation space do not need 23 degrees. With heating at around 60 per cent of a £54,700 bill, roughly £32,800, trimming even 5 per cent is about £1,640.
- Check boiler flow temperatures and weather compensation. Plant in older buildings is frequently oversized and running hotter than the emitters need, which costs gas without adding a degree in the lounge.
- Service the cold side of the kitchen. Walk-in fridge and freezer door seals, condenser coils and defrost settings quietly add to a load that runs 8,760 hours a year, and refrigeration faults show up as cost long before they show up as failure.
- Fit TRVs and proper programmable controls in houses. In supported living and children's homes the win is room-by-room control, not overall setback, because the house never empties.
When to switch, and what actually happens
Put your contract end date in the diary and start pricing 6 to 12 months out. You can agree rates ahead of time and have them start the day the current deal ends, so you never drop onto out-of-contract rates in the gap. Renewing in the last fortnight is the single most common reason care homes overpay, because you take whatever the market is doing that week.
If you run more than one home, or a cluster of supported living houses, build one meter list with the MPAN, MPRN, address and end date for every property, then tender the whole thing as a portfolio. Suppliers price aggregated volume better than they price single small meters, and aligning the end dates stops the group drifting onto deemed rates one property at a time.
The switch itself is administrative, not physical. The wires and the pipes do not change, your distribution network operator stays the same and there is no interruption at the meter. Homes with residents on life-supporting equipment should still be registered on their network operator's Priority Services Register, which is separate from your supply contract and worth checking at the same time.
Our service is free to you. We compare 20 plus suppliers, present the options, handle the paperwork and manage the objection process. Suppliers pay us a commission which is disclosed to you, so you can see what sits inside the rate before you sign anything. One recent bill is enough to start: upload it and we will price your home properly.
Questions we get asked
How much does a UK care home spend on energy each year?
It depends almost entirely on bed count and on whether heating and hot water are gas. A typical 20-bed home is often quoted at around 395,000 kWh a year across both fuels, and published benchmarks put independent homes somewhere between about £18,700 and £113,700 a year at 25p for electricity and 7p for gas plus standing charges. Most independent residential homes land in the £20,000 to £65,000 band. These are estimates, not quotes.
Can you help if we are still in contract?
Yes, and that is usually the better time to start. We can price a renewal up to 12 months ahead and hold the rate so it begins the day your current deal ends. If you have already rolled over, the 30-day window from the start of the rollover may still be open.
Does switching supplier put continuity of care at risk?
No. Nothing physical changes at the meter and there is no interruption to supply. The only practical difference is who sends the bill. Keep your Priority Services Register entry up to date with your network operator and the clinical position is unchanged.
Figures on this page are estimates from published UK benchmarks, including CIBSE TM46 and published care sector data, rather than quotes or customer records. See how we estimate.