Care home operators are the second largest sector after the creative industries with the biggest proportion of ‘mission-led’ organisations across the UK, according to an analysis of Companies House data.
The study,’ The Impact Business Tipping Point: A Data-Driven Census of the UK’s Mission-Led Business Landscape’, found that care homes account for more than one in ten (11.3 per cent) of more than 150,000 mission-led businesses operating across the UK, making the sector one of the eight largest, which together represent over half (51 per cent) of the total mission-led business population.
Creative industry sector businesses were the largest, accounting for 12.3 per cent, while professional services was in third place with 7.3 per cent of businesses in the sector identified by researchers as mission-led.
According to non-profit specialist new business accelerator Allia Impact, who led the research alongside data firm Beauhurst Insights, mission-led businesses have grown by approximately 61 per cent since 2016, compared with 42 per cent growth in the overall UK business population, and generating at least £37 billion in annual turnover and supporting 1.12 million jobs.
They also show higher resilience, with five-year survival rates of around 69 per cent, compared with 45–48 per cent for the wider business base, the study authors said.
The research, which was based on an AI‑assisted analysis of Companies House records using governance structures, keywords, legal forms and sector classifications to identify businesses with social or environmental purpose and grouped them into ‘impact-first’ and ‘balanced’ cohorts to establish a repeatable baseline of the sector, also highlighted the role of care homes within different types of mission-led structures.
It found that care homes represent 6.2 per cent of ‘Impact-First’ organisations, which embed their social purpose in governance, and 15 per cent of more commercially structured ‘balanced’ businesses. However, the report identifies funding disparities between sectors, with community-based services such as care receiving less investment than technology-led industries.
Allia Impact CEO Martin Clark said the findings “reveal a sector that is growing faster, and surviving longer than the wider UK business population.”
Callum Newton, Public Sector Lead at Beauhurst Insights, said: “This report shines a light on a part of the UK economy that has too often been overlooked and hard to define.”
The care home sector in the UK has become increasingly dominated by private operators in recent years, with 85 per cent of homes run by for-profit operators, according to a 2024 University of Oxford analysis of Care Quality Commission (CQC) data, up from around 78 per cent in 2011.
