Stop paying agencies £7,000 per care worker

If you run a care home, domiciliary agency, or supported-living service, you already know the drill. A carer hands in their notice on Friday. By Monday, you're on the phone to an agency. Two weeks later you've got a candidate — and an invoice for 15–20% of their annual salary. For a care worker earning £25,000, that's £3,750 to £6,250 per hire. Industry data puts the true median cost even higher: £7,870 per care worker when you factor in admin time, temp cover, and lost productivity.

Meanwhile, 56% of UK employers admit to ghosting applicants, and 55% of care applications go completely unanswered. The candidates you need are applying — and hearing nothing back.

Lily was built to fix this. Not with another job board or another recruiter taking a cut. With AI phone screening that runs 24/7, responds to every applicant, and costs a fraction of what you're paying now.

The real cost of using a care recruitment agency

Agency fees are just the start. When you factor in the hidden costs — admin hours spent chasing updates, temporary agency staff to fill rota gaps while you wait, and the productivity lost during vacant shifts — the median cost of replacing a single care worker reaches £7,870.

And because agencies work on commission, their incentive is to fill the role — not to find the right person. That misalignment shows up in retention. A bad hire who leaves after three months means you're back to square one, paying the same fees again.

Lily charges £300. Once. Only when you hire. If you just want screening without the full pipeline, that's £99. There's no retainer, no exclusivity clause, no percentage of salary. You keep control of the relationship with your candidates from day one.

Why speed matters in care hiring

The average time to screen an applicant in the care sector is nine days. In that time, your best candidates have already accepted offers elsewhere. Care workers apply to multiple roles at once — and they take the one that responds first.

Lily screens applicants in 0.83 days. That's not a typo. Because Lily runs AI phone interviews around the clock, an applicant who applies at 11pm on a Saturday gets screened before your Monday morning. Every applicant gets a response. Every one gets a fair, structured interview. No ghosting, no delays, no lost candidates.

At Sonderwell, this speed translated into 127% more hires per month and 616 hours of admin time saved every month across their team.

Consistency agencies can't match

When a recruitment agency screens your candidates, quality depends on whichever recruiter picks up the phone that day. Some are thorough. Some are rushing between ten other roles. There's no standardisation, no audit trail, and no way to prove to CQC that every candidate was assessed fairly.

Lily asks every applicant the same structured questions, tailored to the care role you're hiring for. Every response is scored the same way. Every decision is logged. That means you get a CQC-ready audit trail for every hiring decision — not a folder of recruiter notes you can't decipher.

For registered managers preparing for inspection, this isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between scrambling for evidence and having it ready.