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A 40-bed home uses somewhere between 10 and 14 cubic metres of water a day. Bathing assistance, clinical laundry, dishwashing across three meals, kitchen preparation, terminal disinfection, hand hygiene at the door of every resident’s room. The bill arrives once a quarter and looks like a phone number. Almost no one checks it line by line.
You can switch retailer. Care homes have had that right in England since 2017. Most never have.
This page is for the manager or finance lead at a single home or a small group who has noticed the water spend creeping since 2020 and wants to know what’s normal, what’s wrong, and what to do about it. CQC Regulation 12 raised the bar on infection control. The retailer’s tariff did not move with it.
- England’s non-household water market opened to competition on 1 April 2017 under the Water Act 2014.
- Around 20 retailers are licensed by Ofwat to supply care homes, nursing homes and supported-living providers.
- Wholesale supply still comes from regional water companies (Thames Water, Severn Trent, Yorkshire Water, and others).
- Typical UK care home consumption sits at 250-350 litres per resident per day, post-CQC infection-control uplift. Pre-2020 norms were 200-280L.
- Dementia-friendly laminar-flow taps, sensor-operated taps and assisted-bathing equipment all push consumption above old design assumptions. Few tariffs reflect this.
- The three biggest savings levers: a contract retender against the 2017 baseline, a clinical-laundry tariff review, and a surface drainage audit on the garden, car park and ambulance bay.
Why care homes pay more for water than they should
A busy care home cycles water through clinical laundries, dishwashers, ice makers and back-of-house prep at a far higher rate per square metre than most commercial sites. That alone is fine — what isn’t fine is paying daily standing charges on a tariff that hasn’t been touched since the contract was signed, drainage charges on a forecourt that drains to a soakaway, and meter estimates that have been creeping up for two years.
Care homes also tend to sit on tenanted commercial leases — the landlord is often named on the bill, but the operator is the one bleeding money. The retailer doesn’t volunteer corrections, and most care home owners haven’t been told the market is competitive.
The five places care homes overpay
| What’s going wrong | Why it costs you money |
|---|---|
| Clinical laundry on a generic commercial tariff | On-site clinical laundry runs hot, soft and frequent. The hot-water-heavy load profile qualifies for a different volume band than retailers default to, and the wastewater banding rarely follows. |
| Resident-bathing volume not in the load profile | Care planning specifies bathing frequency. The bill doesn’t reflect it. A 40-bed home typically runs 250–350L per resident per day, but is billed against a generic small-commercial tariff. |
| CQC handwashing volume since 2020 not repriced | Infection-control protocols added 15–25% to handwashing volume from 2020 onwards. Most homes never had that volume jump re-tariffed. |
| Surface drainage on the full plot footprint | Garden, residents’ parking, staff parking and ambulance turnaround all default to public-sewer drainage. Most care homes drain at least half of that to soakaway, and the rebate isn’t applied unless requested. |
| On-site kitchen on default office tariff | Kitchens running three meals a day plus tea rounds use commercial-kitchen volume. Most are billed as if they were an office tea-point, which means a tariff one band too low. |
Can care groups and independent operators switch water supplier?
Yes, and the mechanism is different depending on who’s signing the contract.
An care home is its own legal entity, so it can enter a water contract directly — no council approval needed. Multi-academy trusts can contract centrally for every care home in the chain, which usually unlocks better volume pricing. Independent operators sign for their own site, with the contract in the trading entity’s name.
The 12 retailers below are all licensed by Ofwat to supply non-household water in England. Pricing, service, and hospitality-sector experience vary — most trusts shortlist three and go to a simple comparison exercise.
Routes to procurement
Three ways operators in this sector typically bring a new water contract in. Each comes with its own trade-off between control, effort and how sharp the price lands.
Care England and the National Care Forum both operate group-buying schemes that pre-tender utilities across member homes. The unit rate is usually competitive on combined volume. The trade-off: framework deals are written for a generic small-home profile, so a home with an on-site clinical laundry, a high resident-bathing load profile or unusual surface drainage often does better on a tendered contract that prices against actual consumption.
Care home water FAQs
Will switching retailer affect supply, water quality or CQC compliance?
No. Wholesale supply still comes from your regional water company. The pipes, the wholesaler, the water itself, the quality testing regime, all unchanged. Only the company that reads the meter and sends the bill changes. CQC Regulation 12 compliance is unaffected because it sits with the wholesaler and your internal infection-control protocols, not with the billing retailer.
Our consumption jumped after 2020. Can we get a tariff review?
You can ask, but the incumbent has limited motivation. The cleaner route is to retender against the post-2020 consumption profile. Retailers competing for the contract will price against actual current volume, which usually lands a sharper unit rate than a renegotiation with the existing retailer ever does.
What’s a typical water spend for a 40-bed home?
Roughly £6,500 to £9,500 a year, depending on dependency mix, whether laundry is on-site or outsourced, regional wholesaler rates and how much surface drainage the home is being charged for. Homes north of £10,000 a year on a 40-bed footprint usually have a billing or drainage issue worth auditing.
Can we get refunds on incorrect surface drainage charges?
Yes, up to six years backdated. The wholesaler bills surface drainage on an assumption of how much of your plot drains to the public sewer. Gardens, lawned grounds and gravel residents’ parking often drain to soakaway or land. We’ve seen single homes recover £4,000-£12,000 on this line alone.
What about on-site clinical laundry?
If your home has its own laundry processing soiled bedding and residents’ clothing, ask whether your trade effluent is correctly classified. The Mogden formula bands wastewater by organic and suspended-solids load. A clinical laundry usually sits below a generic catering or commercial classification.
What does a free audit actually look at?
Three things at the same time. We compare the unit rate against the live market across all 12 retailers. We audit surface drainage, trade effluent and standing charges for historic billing errors that can be backdated up to six years. And we check whether the contract structure fits your actual usage profile better than the default. If we don’t recover anything, you don’t pay a fee.
How do I get a quote without committing?
Send a recent water bill. The SPID, annual cubic-metre volume and current retailer are all on it. We come back within two working days with a like-for-like alternative quote and a flag if anything looks worth auditing for historic refunds.
