The twenty checks, and exactly what it takes to pass each one.

This document is the scoring rubric behind The UK Home Care Private Client Readiness Report 2026. It is published deliberately. A standard other people can apply without us is worth more than a finding only we can produce.

It answers one question, and only one. Not is this a good website — that question has as many answers as it has people willing to give one. The question here is can this business run paid acquisition without leaking. That one has a testable answer, and it is the one that costs money.

Every check has a written pass condition. Two people applying the standard to the same provider should reach the same score.

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How it scores

Five dimensions. Four checks each. 20 checks in total. Every check resolves to exactly one of three values.

Value	Meaning
pass	Verified true by direct observation of the live site, the public register, or the provider's own statement on a recorded call.
fail	Verified false by the same means.
unknown	Not observable by the method used. Never scored as a fail.

A dimension passes when all four of its checks pass. A dimension fails if any check fails. If none fails but at least one is unknown, the dimension remains unresolved — not passed, not failed. A provider is ready when all five dimensions pass.

That is a hard bar, and it is set there on purpose. A funnel is a chain. A provider that gets nineteen checks right and loses the enquiry at the twentieth has lost the enquiry.

The reporting rule

Every published figure states its denominator as the number of providers on which that check could actually be resolved, not the size of the cohort.

Absence of evidence is not reported as evidence of absence. Where a check was not observable by the method used, it is recorded as unknown and excluded from the denominator, rather than counted against the provider.

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The twenty checks

Each check below states the condition under which it passes. Anything short of that condition is a fail, unless the check was not observable at all, in which case it is unknown.

1. Credibility

Do the public facts agree with each other, and do they give a family a reason to believe?

Check	Passes when
C1 Regulator record matches the site	The site states its registration with CQC, RQIA, CIW or the Care Inspectorate, and the registered name and location match the public register.
C2 One phone number	Every printed number and every tel: link on the site resolve to the same working line.
C3 A named accountable person	A specific person who answers for the service — the manager, a director or the owner — is named on the site. "Our team" does not pass.
C4 Independent review evidence	At least one independent review source is present and reachable — Google Business Profile, homecare.co.uk, Trustpilot or equivalent. Testimonials hosted only on the provider's own site do not pass.

2. Place

Is the provider findable and credible for the area it actually serves?

Check	Passes when
P1 The town is in the title or H1	The primary operating town, borough or district appears in the homepage <title> or <h1>.
P2 A real service-area page exists	At least one page addresses a named area with content unique to that area. Cloned pages differing only in place name do not pass.
P3 Claimed coverage is credible	The coverage claimed on the site is consistent with the coverage on the regulator record and with the provider's stated capacity.
P4 A matching local business record	A Google Business Profile exists and its name, number and address match the website.

3. Capture

Can a family actually make contact, and does the first contact learn enough to be useful?

Check	Passes when
K1 Click-to-call works	Every tel: link is well-formed and dials the number the page displays.
K2 The form is short	The primary enquiry form requires six or fewer fields.
K3 The form learns the four things	It captures who needs care, where they are, what service is wanted, and when it is needed.
K4 Submissions are confirmed to arrive	A submission was verified to reach a destination. An unverified backend does not pass.

4. Response

Does every enquiry reach a person, with an owner and a clock?

Check	Passes when
R1 Enquiries land somewhere accountable	New enquiries arrive somewhere other than a shared or personal inbox — a CRM, a pipeline, or a system with states.
R2 The enquirer is acknowledged automatically	An automatic acknowledgement is sent on submission.
R3 First response has a named owner	A specific person is responsible for the first reply.
R4 A response standard exists	A stated response time exists and can be measured against.

5. Measurement

After the fact, can the provider say where an enquiry came from and what happened to it?

Check	Passes when
M1 Analytics on every page	A web analytics tag is present sitewide, not on the homepage alone.
M2 A conversion event fires	An enquiry triggers a distinct conversion event in analytics or an ad platform.
M3 A confirmation destination exists	Submitting the form reaches a distinct thank-you URL or an equivalent trackable state.
M4 Calls are attributable	Call tracking, or per-source numbers, make a phone enquiry traceable to a source.

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What the standard measures

• It measures commercial readiness, not care quality. Nothing here is a view on how well anyone cares for anyone.
• It measures each provider against this published rubric, not against other providers. There is no league table and there will not be one.
• It is an independent commercial assessment, and has no standing with any regulator.

Cohort and consent rules

Any provider scored under this standard was audited with its own knowledge, as part of a commercial enquiry it initiated. Published findings are aggregated. Individual providers are never identified, and no combination of published details is permitted to make one identifiable — that includes page counts paired with a distinctive technical fault. Per-provider scorecards remain confidential to the provider concerned.

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Citation and reuse

This standard is free to quote, reproduce, apply and build on, including commercially, with attribution and a link. No permission request is needed and there is nothing to fill in to read it.

Changelog

• v1.0 — August 2026. First published version. Five dimensions, twenty checks.

Versions are numbered and dated. A citation of a numbered version stays valid after a later version publishes.