Children's Home Cost and
Viability Calculator.
How much money do you need before your first child arrives, and what occupancy and weekly fee does the home need to break even? Answer a few questions about the home and get a clear, sourced answer you can take to your accountant or lender.
Indicative planning estimates only. This is not financial, legal or tax advice. Check the figures with an accountant and your lender before relying on them. The calculator covers England only, and single-building homes only.
It tells you how much to have, not how much you will make.
Profit depends on things no calculator can know: which children you care for, what each local authority will pay, how quickly you fill. So this tool does not headline profit or margin. It shows the monthly surplus or shortfall in a table, month by month, and leaves the conclusions to you and your advisers.
The weekly fee is the one number it will not guess. Fees vary hugely with children's needs, so you enter your own, and the tool shows the published averages beside it for context.
Where every number comes from
Every figure in the calculator carries a label saying which of four kinds it is, so you can see at a glance what is a published fact, what is local data, what is our estimate, and what is your own input.
Fixed facts such as Ofsted registration fees, the National Living Wage and employer National Insurance. Dated and sourced, and not editable.
Rents, house prices and interest rates for your area from the Office for National Statistics, HM Land Registry and the Bank of England. Each shows the period it covers.
Typical sector figures such as insurance, utilities and training. These are our estimates, not published statistics. You can change every one.
Things only you know: the number of places, your rota, your weekly fee and your timeline.
Data sources
Registration and annual fees for children's social care services.
Price Index of Private Rents, for local rents.
Price Paid Data, for local house prices.
Bank Rate and the quoted buy-to-let mortgage rate.
Children's homes workforce census, for staffing and pay context.
National Living Wage, employer National Insurance, Employment Allowance, pension thresholds and Stamp Duty Land Tax.
Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0. Ofsted fees, the National Living Wage and tax thresholds last verified 24 October 2026.
Set up your team, policies and compliance in ARC before you are registered, for just £29 a month.
The Registration Readiness Checker shows what is missing from an application to register a children's home, and what to do first.