Adding nursing, or dropping it
Should we register for nursing, or would we be better as a residential home?
Compare nursing and residential need, the council's nursing rate plus Funded Nursing Care, and the cost of nurses.
When people use it: When nurse recruitment changes or you plan a registration change.
How it works, step by step
Nursing against residential need
Switch the care service bar between Nursing and Residential: which one runs short sooner?
Nursing supply trend
Falling nursing beds is often homes dropping nursing because they cannot recruit nurses: an opportunity if you can.
The money
Choose Nursing in the bar: compare the margin as a nursing home with the same home as residential.
The views you will use
Ask the data in plain English
A real question and answer from Ask Orrery, the assistant inside the platform, for a care home owner in Kent (October 2026). It answers only from Orrery's data and the subscriber's own documents, and shows its sources.
Need is growing at about the same pace in both. Residential is very slightly ahead, but the gap that opens is in nursing.
On the central case, beds needed in Kent between 2026 and 2035 (Orrery demand model, older people):
- Residential: 4,444 to 5,909, up 33%.
- Nursing: 5,759 to 7,599, up 32%.
The difference is in supply. Residential beds fall from 6,649 to 6,239, which still leaves 330 beds to spare in 2035. Nursing beds fall from 7,172 to 6,730. That turns 1,413 spare beds today into a shortfall of 869 by 2035, with need overtaking beds in 2032.
Both are driven by the population aged 85 and over growing 51%. The district picture varies. For example, Swale is tightest for nursing and Ashford for residential.
These are projections on stated assumptions, not forecasts. You can change the assumptions on the page.
Sources: ONS projections, CQC care directory, ONS Census 2021.
- Nursing beds are harder to replace, so shortages last longer, but nurse vacancies are the main operating risk.
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