The Home Office have made a number of changes to UK Business Immigration Rules 2025, affecting skilled workers and increased the minimum salary for some health and social care workers. These changes took effect on 09 April 2025. The three headline changes are:
- Increase in the minimum salary threshold for certain workers, mostly those in the health and care sector;
- new rules regarding deductions from a Skilled Workers salary and
- the introduction of the ‘care worker recruitment requirement’ for Care Provider Sponsors.
Increase in salary thresholds
The biggest change in this regard is increasing the minimum threshold rate for certain codes from £23,200 to £25,000 or £12.81 per hour.
The main place where we see this salary increase affecting Skilled Workers is for roles on the Immigration Salary List or Health and Care occupations.
Additionally, in relation to Salary Thresholds, the national Payscale’s for healthcare and education have also been reviewed nationally and the immigration rules updated to align the two.
If a worker, sponsored before 9th April 2025, is being paid less than the new going rate a Sponsor does not need to take action immediately as the rules do not apply retrospectively. However, the Sponsor will need to review whether they are able and willing to increase the workers salary to the new minimum when the time comes to extend their visa. The exception to the above is if the worker is being paid less than the new National Minimum Wage, for example if a Care Worker is being sponsored on the old rate of £11.90 per hour, the sponsor must increase this immediately to £12.21 in line with the new National Minimum Wage.
Care Worker Changes to UK Business Immigration Rules 2025
There have been some big changes in relation to the recruitment for Care Workers and Senior Care Workers. These rules do not apply to people already Sponsored as a Care worker/Senior Care Worker or lawfully working for the Care Provider.
The Home Office have introduced the ‘care worker recruitment requirement’. This mandates that when the Sponsor is looking to employ more Care Workers, they must first consult with their ‘regional care partnership’. The regional care partnership has been created in order to offer a match-making service between Sponsors and displaced Care Workers who have lost their sponsorship.
The Care industry has been rife with abuse of sponsorship, see our blog here on a case study in this regard. This new care worker recruitment requirement is designed to place workers whose Sponsors have not got work for them or whose licences have been revoked an opportunity to be sponsored by a bona fide care provider who have a gap in their workforce.
For a sponsor to assign a certificate of sponsorship toa Care Worker/ Senior Care Worker, they must satisfy the Home Office that they have tried to recruit from this ‘pool’ of displaced care workers already in the UK. The Sponsor is allowed to recruit from overseas or outside of this pool, but must show that there were no suitable workers available from the pool of workers and this is then to be confirmed by the regional/sub-regional partnership.
There are two key exceptions to this requirement.
- A sponsor can assign a certificate to an existing employee who has been working for them for at least there months.
- A sponsor can also assign a certificate of sponsorship to a new recruit who is already working as a care worker or senior care worker for another sponsor and wants to change employer.
The Home Office are assessing whether the care worker recruitment requirement has been met when they consider requests for new certificates of sponsorship, and failure to do so could result in a refusal. The Home Office have set out strict guidance on how to assign care worker Certificates of Sponsorship in order to satisfy this requirement.
Deductions from salary
The Home Office have introduced new rules in relation to lawful deductions to a workers salary. When the Home Office assess whether the workers salary meets the requisite threshold, they will assess the salary after any deductions the employer intends to make in relation to business costs, immigration costs or investment. Immigration costs includes the visa application fee, the immigration health surcharge, priority service fees and any legal or administrative costs associated with their visa application.
What this means is that if your worker is paid well in excess of the salary threshold for their code then this new rule is unlikely to affect you.
Where this has potential to cause issues is when your worker is being paid close to the minimum salary for their role. For example,
- Your worker is being paid £25,000 per year as a care worker. This is the minimum for the route
- The minimum salary per month then works out to be £2,083 per month
- If you, the sponsor, have an agreement that you will pay their visa fees and immigration health surcharge upfront and then deduct a proportion of this amount each month. This would take their monthly salary below the minimum and therefore the worker is not eligible for sponsorship.
It is important to remember the employer is never allowed to recoup costs for the Certificate of sponsorship from the worker. This includes the certificate assignment fee, the immigration skills charge and any legal or administrative fee relating to the certificate of sponsorship.
Other changes
Other relatively minor changes to UK Business Immigration Rules 2025 include a change to Sponsors reporting duties is with regard to neonatal leave. The Home Office have brought the Sponsor Duties in line with employment law. If a worker is absent for more than 4 weeks for the purpose of neonatal leave, this is reportable opposed to a reason to stop sponsoring the worker. This was not previously provided for in the rules.
Support with your Sponsor Licence
For support with your Sponsor Licence based on the changes above or any other queries, please do get in touch with our Business Immigration Team who specialise in this complex area. You can take advantage of a free initial consultation using the button below. Or simply reach our with details of your query using the below contact form and the team will be able to assist.
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