People and care
across the UK.

3,269 new people and care companies registered at Companies House in August 2026, and 43,520 over the last twelve months across the 7 trades in this family. That is about 119 a day, somewhere in the country.

Register snapshot 1 September 2026. A monthly snapshot, not a live feed. How the counts are made.

People and care · United KingdomAugust 2026
New in August
3,269
Across 7 trades in this family
Last 12 months
43,520
Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · 3,627 a month
Share of all new companies
8.4%
43,520 of the 515,810 companies counted across all 39 trades in the last twelve months. That makes this the number 5 of the five families.
Source: Companies HouseSnapshot 1 September 2026
Sep 2025 – Aug 2026

Health practitioners leads the family.

The 7 trades grouped into people and care, busiest first. Health practitioners took 18,963 of the 43,520 counted here over the last twelve months, 44% of the family on its own. Each trade opens on its own page, broken down town by town.

New UK company registrations in the people and care family, by trade. The bar shows the twelve-month figure relative to health practitioners, the busiest trade in the family.
Trade Aug 2026 Last 12 months Relative twelve-month volume
Health practitioners 1,363 18,963
Cleaning services 951 12,178
Care services 405 4,829
Fitness 230 3,044
Security services 181 2,404
Childcare 109 1,687
Veterinary 30 415
People and care, all 7 trades 3,269 43,520

The families are ours, not the register's: they exist so the colour on every chart means something. A company carrying more than one SIC code can land in more than one trade, so the rows above can count the same company twice and the family total is a total of the rows rather than a headcount of companies. The grouping is set out in full on the method page, SIC code by SIC code.

Twelve months

March was the busiest month.

New people and care companies registered across the UK each month. The busiest month was March on 4,287. The quietest was December on 2,771.

New people and care companies in the UK, by month

Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · 43,520 in total

Previous months August 2026

Registrations dip over Christmas and pick up in the new year in almost every trade, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier rather than with the one before it.

2015 to 2026

How far back it goes.

People and care companies still on the register, by year of incorporation, and the like-for-like comparison underneath: the first 8 months of 2026 against the same 8 months of 2025.

New people and care companies in the UK, by year

2015 to 2026 · 2026 counts January to August only

Complete years 2026, part year
January to August 2026 29,432 New people and care companies so far this year
Same months, 2025 28,700 Up 3% year on year
2025, the last full year 42,788 Against 9,482 in 2015

Older years undercount. The register only holds companies that still exist. Anything formed in an earlier year and since dissolved has dropped off it, so the further back the chart goes the more it undercounts. That alone makes every trade look like it is growing. Some of the rise here is real growth and some of it is simply that recent companies have had less time to close. The long view of UK company formation takes the same problem apart across all 39 trades.

The like-for-like measure inside the family: January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025. Both runs of months are equally recent, so neither has had longer to lose companies off the register.
Trade Change Jan–Aug 2025 Jan–Aug 2026
Childcare Up 16% 1,022 1,181
Fitness Up 7% 1,966 2,095
Cleaning services Up 5% 7,821 8,240
Health practitioners Up 1% 12,719 12,833
Care services Down 1% 3,255 3,226
Security services Down 2% 1,619 1,586
Veterinary Down 9% 298 271

4 of the 7 trades in this family registered more companies in the first 8 months of 2026 than in the same months of 2025; 3 registered fewer. Childcare moved most on the way up, at 16%. Veterinary moved most on the way down, at 9%.

Sep 2025 – Aug 2026

Where people and care firms are starting.

New people and care companies registered over the last twelve months, by the post town on the registered office address, or, where that office is a formation agent, by the town the company's directors run their other companies from.

The outlier 5,195 London

London is counted as a single post town, so it is not really in the same contest as the rest of the list. It took 4.2 times as many new people and care companies last year as Birmingham. Leaving it in the ranking below would squash every other bar to a stub, so it sits up here on its own.

1,234 Birmingham, the next town down, reaches the white mark 5,195 London, the whole bar

Ranked 2 to 16, without London

Bars scaled to Birmingham at 1,234, not to London

02 Birmingham 1,234
03 Manchester 1,160
04 Leeds 681
05 Glasgow 632
06 Leicester 551
07 Liverpool 533
08 Nottingham 522
09 Bristol 503
10 Ilford 398
11 Sheffield 378
12 Coventry 353
13 Bradford 327
14 Milton Keynes 326
15 Northampton 299
16 Luton 297

Each town above links to its busiest people and care trade there where that pairing has enough volume for a page, and to the town itself where it does not. Every town counted, ranked and linked.