Practical AI · UK SMEs & care providers

Every business is on the same ladder. Where's yours?

Five rungs, from "I think a couple of them use ChatGPT" to "it runs itself". Find your rung, then buy only what the next one needs. Clear services with nouns for names, honest prices behind a door, and sometimes the right answer is a spreadsheet.

Five minutes, no sign up · or read the ladder first

Kevin Clubb Data & AI practitioner Care & regulated sectors UK Proof published on ai-sustained.com
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rungs on the ladder
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health check. fully credited
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the audit. fixed, two weeks
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for everything in the library
The AI maturity ladder

Five rungs. One honest question: which one is you?

No jargon, no "digital transformation journey". Each rung is what a business actually looks like from the inside, in the owner's own words, and the one thing worth buying to reach the next rung. Most businesses I meet are on rung 0 or 1. That is not a criticism, it is a starting point.

0
Unmanaged
"I think a couple of them use it."

Staff are using personal ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini accounts. There are no rules, no approved tools, and nobody knows what has already been pasted in. Cheapest problem on this page to fix, and the riskiest to ignore.

Next move · get safe
1
Safe
"We've sorted the rules but we're not really using it."

Written rules, approved tools, one named owner, staff trained on the red lines. Nothing automated yet. The temptation here is to buy software; the right move is to find out where the hours actually go first.

Next move · get useful
2
Useful
"It saves Karen a day a week on quotes."

Two or three real jobs are measurably faster, and someone can name the hours saved. Each win is a fixed-shape build with a noun for a name: pick a job, rebuild it, hand it over working.

Next move · build the next job
3
Connected
"I get the Monday numbers on Monday."

Systems talk to each other, the data is clean enough to trust, and the numbers arrive without anyone assembling them by hand. This rung is where the margin lives, and it is mostly plumbing, not magic.

Next move · connect and report
4
Compounding
"We've got a list and we work through it."

There is a backlog, an owner, and a monthly rhythm. New ideas get shipped or killed on evidence. Nobody needs a consultant living here; they need one on call.

Next move · keep momentum
Start here

Three ways in. Each one pays for the next.

Nobody should buy a build from a stranger. Start small: the free check costs five minutes, the health check is fully credited if you go on to the audit, and £500 of the audit follows you into any build. The ladder pays its own way up.

Free · five minutes

The readiness check

£0 · no sign up

Eighteen questions, answered by you, about how the business runs today. A score out of 100, six areas rated, your rung on the ladder named.

  • Your rung, and your weakest area
  • Works on a phone, between jobs
  • Honest limit: it is a mirror. It only knows what you tell it.
The whole free library is behind it: policies, ground rules, supplier questions. No email, ever.
New · the sensible first pound
90 minutes · one week

The AI Health CheckThe Admin Load Check

£450 · fixed

Ninety minutes with me, walking your actual week. Then a four-page written brief, not a sales pitch.Ninety minutes with your registered manager, walking where the office hours actually go. Then a four-page written brief, not a sales pitch.

  • Your three best opportunities, roughly costed in hours and pounds
  • The thing to stop doing immediately
  • What to buy next, from anyone, not just me
  • The difference from the free check: my eyes, not your mirror
All £450 credited against the audit within 60 days. If it is useful, it was free.
Two weeks · four hours of your time

The AI Opportunity Audit

£1,450 · fixed, no day rates

I go and find out. Interviews with the people doing the work, evidence instead of opinion, and nine deliverables, none of them a forty-page report.

  • Eight to twelve use cases found, scored and costed against your own numbers
  • The ones I recommend against, in writing
  • The shadow AI already running in your business
  • A 90-day plan with a name and a date on every line
£500 credited against any build booked within 60 days. See a finished one first.
The shopping list

Fixed shapes, plain nouns, no mystery box.

Every service is a specific job, done, by a date. Tap a card for exactly what lands and how long it takes. Prices live behind the door, on purpose. Pick your world first:

Owner-run UK businesses · roughly 10 to 250 staff
CQC-regulated adult social care · home care, care homes, supported living
Build · pick a job, get it back working 8 services12 services
  • A process catalogue in plain English, one page per job
  • A heat map of where the hours actually go
  • Stands alone, or feeds every build on this page
Price is behind the door.
  • The build itself: drafting, sorting, checking or chasing
  • A written how-it-works page your team can follow
  • Two weeks of fixing it after go-live, included
Price is behind the door.
  • The mapping, the build, and the error handling
  • A written record of exactly what flows where
  • Top of the range when a system has no proper way in
Price is behind the door.
  • Agreeing what each number actually means — the hard part
  • The report, arriving on its own, every time
  • A definitions page so two people stop arguing about "sales"
Price is behind the door.
  • Duplicates merged, formats standardised, gaps flagged
  • Rules so it stays clean after I leave
  • Unglamorous, and the reason the other builds work
Price is behind the door.
  • Your template, your data, a draft in minutes
  • You still read and sign every one
  • Works for quotes, reports, proposals, letters
Price is behind the door.
  • Triage: what is urgent, what is routine, what is spam
  • A drafted reply waiting in the right tone
  • A human always presses send. Always.
Price is behind the door.
  • What exists, mapped to what they will ask for
  • The gaps, named, with a plan to close them
  • Built before anyone asks, not the week after
Price is behind the door.
  • Right area, right training, right hours — ranked, not guessed
  • Messages drafted and ready in your coordinator's hand
  • Your coordinator still decides and still sends
Price is behind the door.
  • Council and ICB remittances matched line by line
  • The aged-debt list, current, without a spreadsheet afternoon
  • Escalation emails drafted, ready to send
Price is behind the door.
  • One register: training, DBS, right-to-work, registrations
  • Warnings early enough to actually do something
  • The lowest-risk build on this page
Price is behind the door.
  • Voice in, formatted draft out, in your house style
  • Covers supervisions, appraisals, spot checks, return-to-work
  • The manager edits and signs. Nothing files itself.
Price is behind the door.
  • Thousands of notes a week, and today nobody reads them all
  • A morning digest: what needs eyes, what is a pattern
  • Flags go to a human. It never makes a clinical call.
Price is behind the door.
  • Four write-ups from one entry, each in the right format
  • The CQC notification arrives as a draft for sign-off
  • A human approves every submission
Price is behind the door.
  • What you already have, mapped to what they will ask
  • Gaps named, with owners and dates to close them
  • Written so a commissioner could read it too
Price is behind the door.
  • Exceptions grouped by cause, not listed by row
  • The genuinely odd ones surfaced first
  • Payroll signs off in an hour, not an afternoon
Price is behind the door.
  • One dataset in, four formats out
  • Each commissioner gets their own shape of the same truth
  • Deadlines stop being a diary event
Price is behind the door.
  • Sifting against your criteria, in writing
  • Compliance-pack gaps identified and chased automatically
  • A human decides every hire. Obviously.
Price is behind the door.
  • Every policy checked against what is current
  • Changes drafted for sign-off, not just flagged
  • A rolling calendar so it never becomes a cliff again
Price is behind the door.
  • Every rate, every uplift, every contract, one table
  • Check any invoice against it in seconds
  • On a 6% margin, this table is the margin
Price is behind the door.
People · your team, levelled up 4 services
  • Recording and a one-page handout included
  • Built around your work, not a generic deck
Price is behind the door.
  • Real tasks from your business, worked live
  • Two working things per person by the end
Price is behind the door.
  • Everything in the half day
  • An adoption plan someone actually owns
Price is behind the door.
  • Turns a one-off project into a habit
  • Your champion, your backlog, my scar tissue
Price is behind the door.
  • Resident data red lines, made memorable
  • Recording and one-page handout included
Price is behind the door.
  • Your actual paperwork, worked live
  • Everyone leaves with two things working
Price is behind the door.
  • The governance position, in your words
  • The inspector question, answered before it is asked
Price is behind the door.
  • Turns a one-off project into a habit
  • Your champion, your backlog, my scar tissue
Price is behind the door.
Safe & retained · the bookends 3 services
  • Signed, dated, owned — not a template in a drawer
  • 45-minute session so the team actually knows the rules
  • The free versions are in the library; this one is made yours
Price is behind the door.
  • Keeps the list moving after a build lands
  • A month's notice to cancel, no lock-in
Price is behind the door.
  • An AI lead without the salary
  • Supplier management and a monthly evidence report
Price is behind the door.
  • Written for CQC-regulated services, not adapted to them
  • Most providers still have no written AI policy. Staff are already using it.
  • The cheapest way to stop that being a notifiable problem
Price is behind the door.
  • Keeps the list moving after a build lands
  • A month's notice to cancel, no lock-in
Price is behind the door.
  • An AI lead without the salary
  • Supplier management and a monthly evidence report
Price is behind the door.
Deliberately not on this list

Medication ordering between GP, pharmacy and agency. It is the biggest prize in the sector and it is an integration problem, not an AI one — anyone selling it as a quick win has never sat in a care office. Also absent: anything that makes a clinical judgement, decides a safeguarding outcome, or writes to a resident's record without a human pressing send.

The price list

Behind this door, on purpose.

Not hidden — one click away. The numbers are honest ranges: where a job lands in its range depends on how many systems are involved, whether they have a proper way in, and the state of your data. Every range holds; bundles are where the movement is.

Any business · the listCare providers · the list

Start

The readiness checkFree
AI Health CheckAdmin Load Check£450 fixed
AI Opportunity Audit£1,450 fixed
Policy & Ground Rules PackAI Policy & Safe Use Pack£650–£1,100£750–£1,200

Build

Where The Week Goes£1,200–£2,200
One Job, Done For You£1,500–£3,000
Stop Typing It Twice£2,200–£4,500
Your Numbers, Automatically£1,800–£3,800
Clean The List£800–£1,600
The Document Factory£1,500–£3,200
First Response£1,400–£2,800
What The Regulator Will Ask£1,600–£3,500

Build

The 6:30am Problem£2,200–£4,000
Get Paid Faster£2,000–£3,800
Nothing Expires Unnoticed£1,200–£2,200
Say It Once£1,500–£2,800
What The Notes Are Telling You£2,000–£3,800
Write Once, File Four Times£2,200–£4,200
Ready For The Call£1,800–£3,500
Payroll Without The Wednesday£1,500–£2,800
The Returns Machine£1,800–£3,400
From Advert To Started£1,800–£3,200
The Policy Suite£2,200–£4,500
What Are We Actually Paid?£900–£1,800

People

The AI HourThe AI Hour for Care Teams£500–£750
Half-Day WorkshopHalf-Day Office Workshop£1,100–£1,700
Full-Day WorkshopRegistered Manager's Session£1,800–£2,800£900–£1,500
AI Champion Coaching£1,200–£2,000

Retained

On Call · a day a month£650–£950/mo
Fractional AI Lead · 2–4 days£1,300–£3,600/mo
Advisory day rate£750–£1,100

Bundles · where the discount lives

Safe Start · policy pack + AI Hour + scorecard walkthrough£1,100–£1,600
Prove It · audit + one build + workshop + 2 months on call£4,500–£7,500
Connected · audit + data + integration + reporting + coaching£9,000–£16,000

Bundles · where the discount lives

Safe Hands · policy pack + AI Hour + RM session£1,700–£2,600
Ninety Days Back · audit + one build + workshop + 2 months on call£4,800–£8,000
The Office That Runs Itself · audit + three builds + coaching + 6 months on call£11,000–£19,000

How the ranges work. Bottom of a range: one site, systems with a proper way in, data in reasonable shape. Top of a range: more than two systems, no API on one of them, multiple sites, or data that needs a clean first. You get the number in writing before anything starts, and it does not move after that. Credits: the £450 check is fully credited against the audit; £500 of the audit is credited against any build, both within 60 days.

Talk numbers or start with the free check and work up.
The example pack

See a finished audit before you buy one.

Everything above is a sample. The pack is the full set of all nine deliverables for Bramley & Finch Care, a fictional 42-staff provider, produced exactly the way yours would be. Real method, made-up company. If you like what their money bought, you will like yours more, because yours will have your own numbers in it.

9 hrs/wk
back from care plan drafts & reviews
5 hrs/wk
back from daily notes & handovers
11 days
off local authority payment time
5 staff
using free AI on resident data. now they aren't
Illustrative figures from the worked example. Your list will be your own.
Free resources
7free things,
no email required

The library is open, and it keeps growing.

Printable ground rules, a one page AI policy you can sign this week, the questions to put to your suppliers, a worked example of a finished audit, and a five minute readiness check that scores you out of 100. No forms, no email capture, no attribution needed. Put your own logo on any of them.

Newest: The five minute AI readiness check · added 13 Aug 2026
Something new roughly every two to three weeks
Nothing behind a form. Ever.
The house rule
Sometimes the right AI spend is zero. If that's the finding, that's the finding. You'll get it in writing, and I'll have saved you a lot more than the fee.
Straight answers

The small print, in large print.

What the audit is not
No implementation, no vendor procurement, no custom builds, no more than three interviews, one playback session, one round of minor amendments. That discipline is what keeps the price fixed and the clock at two weeks. Anything bigger is scoped separately, with your credit applied.
Do you need access to our systems?
No. The audit works from your questionnaire, the interviews and what you show me on screen. Nothing installed, no logins shared, and no resident or client data handled, ever. Your GDPR and CQC position stays exactly where it was. The audit usually improves it, because the first finding in most care settings is staff quietly using free AI tools on resident information, and the fix is a one-page set of ground rules that costs nothing.
Who is actually doing the work?
Me, Kevin Clubb. My day job is making data and AI useful inside a large UK business in a regulated, inspected, people-heavy sector: data platform, BI, CRM rollout, live AI adoption. The parallels with care (compliance evidence, shift patterns, thin margins, funder invoicing) are why care providers are my focus. The thinking is published in the open on ai-sustained.com, so you can judge it before you spend a pound.
What if we're too small, or not ready?
Then the discovery call is where I say so, and we part friends. The audit suits providers of roughly 10 to 250 staff: a single care home, a domiciliary agency, a small group, or the equivalent in any other hands-on sector. Smaller than that and the answer is usually a conversation, not an audit.
Book something

Book a call, or just register interest.

Same three fields either way. Pick what you want on the right: a 20-minute call, the £450 Health Check, or more detail first. I come back within one working day, and if the audit doesn't fit your service I'll say so rather than sell it.

Prefer email? [email protected]