Boutique Care Homes Named Care Group of the Year Finalist for 4th Year
Boutique Care Homes has been named a finalist in the Care Home Group of the Year (Small) category at the National Care Awards 2026. It is the fourth year running the group has reached this shortlist: a win in 2023, a finalist placement in 2024, a second win in 2025, and now, in 2026, a return to the shortlist, with the result decided at Park Plaza London Westminster Bridge on 6 November.
For Ameet Kotecha, Founder and Managing Director of Boutique Care Homes, four appearances in a row points to something steadier than luck. “Four years in a row is not something that happens by accident,” he said. “Every one of our homes is built around the same idea: that residents should feel part of a warm, loving family, not a rota of care tasks. Seeing that recognised nationally, again and again, tells us the team is holding that standard every single day, in every home.”
That idea takes a literal shape at Chartwell House in Broadstairs, where residents run their own shop, The Chartwellion, stocking shelves, serving customers and managing sales themselves. “It’s all about enabling the residents to continue living, rather than just sitting around to wait out the final chapter,” said Zoe Antoniades, whose family member lives at the home. It is exactly this kind of detail, alongside the clinical basics, that judges are weighing when they decide whether a group has earned its place among the country’s best.
Repeating that standard once is one thing. Doing it across five separate homes, each with its own staff, residents and daily rhythms, is another. The Burlington in Shepperton, Brampton Manor in Newmarket, Chartwell House in Broadstairs, Keymer Hall in Burgess Hill and Martello Manor in Hythe were each individually designed around local character, from Brampton Manor’s equine heritage to Chartwell House’s coastal calm, so no two homes look or feel alike. What the National Care Awards judges are really testing is whether the quality behind them does.
“Consistency is the hardest thing to get right in this sector,” said Martin Murphy, Director of Operations at Boutique Care Homes. “It would be easy for quality to vary from home to home. Our job is to make sure it doesn’t, whether that’s how we train staff, how we plan care or how we listen to families. This shortlisting reflects work across the whole group, not just one home.”
That consistency starts with the people delivering it. Every senior team member across Boutique Care Homes is NVQ qualified in dementia care, half of the wider workforce holds a dementia-related qualification, and every home has its own Dementia Friends Ambassador. Staff retention stands at 98.5%, with zero agency spend, so residents are looked after by the same familiar faces rather than a rotating cast of temporary staff.
The numbers residents and families hand back tell the same story. In the group’s 2026 survey, 99% of residents said they would recommend their home, 98.4% of families and friends agreed, 98% of relatives said their loved one’s privacy and dignity was respected, and every visiting professional agreed residents are treated with kindness and dignity. Boutique Care Homes also holds a 9.7 out of 10 score on carehome.co.uk at the time of writing in September 2026 and has ranked among the site’s Top 20 Small Care Home Groups for three years running, a run of recognition that continued earlier in 2026 with Top 10 UK Care Home Provider at the Lottie Awards.
Care so good, it’s unexpected is the line Boutique Care Homes has always built its homes around, and a fourth consecutive shortlisting, with two wins already banked, reads as evidence that the promise holds rather than a slogan repeated for effect. It is the same promise behind the group’s newer, wider vision: Not just care. Life, Thriving. That’s Life Enrichment. Whichever way November’s result goes, the shortlisting itself says that vision is already true, in five homes, every day.
