Mark Walford may be just 24, but he has already given up a career in the City of London and set up his own business — specialising in care for the elderly.

He said: "I was made redundant last year, having become a City trader at 20. So I thought, ‘Let's do this instead’. I helped my mother to establish her own business as a care provider.

“Most of her work is within a ten-mile radius of Chinnor, where we live. But her clients often come from hundreds of miles away, because it's the relatives who arrange the care.

"I thought, 'How do you get a local business to have national or international reach?'"

His answer is a website called Trustedcare.co.uk. As well as a list of providers registered with the Quality Care Commission, he will include a comparison tool and feedback from clients.

He said: “The aim is to make it the UK's number one social care website — somewhere between Rightmove and Trip Advisor. We allow people to rate the services, but it's carefully monitored.”

Income will come from providers who choose to enlarge their listing with promotional material, photographs and a link to their own website.

“It has been going for a month now, and we have already had 3,000 inquiries and signed up two of the largest care providers in the country, Voyage Care and Barchester Healthcare. We have also had interest from the Department of Health.”

He has invested his redundancy money, and “everything I have” in the business, employing three staff to market the service and validate any feedback received, and renting office space in Checkendon, near Henley.

He is determined to make the site unbiased and authentic by double-checking every comment submitted so as to overcome criticisms made of websites such as Trip Advisor. “Care is far more important than a holiday. It is someone’s life, at the end of the day,” he said.

He is confident his investment will pay off.

“Care is one of the only industries in the Western world that is going to grow as more people live longer and families live further apart.

“I have risked a lot by doing it the way I have rather than doing it on the cheap, but it is not something I feel I could have done any other way.”

And he says providers understand that not all comments will be positive.

"They would rather receive feedback in a place where they can give a response or deal with the problem. Just because they are paying for an extra service, it does not mean that they can exclude negative comments."