Following changes announced by the Home Office on 12 March 2025, a raft of changes will be made to the current immigration rules. Of most interest to our clients will be changes to the immigration rules related to sponsoring care workers and changes to the salary thresholds applicable for skilled workers. 

Amended provisions for care workers and senior care workers 

In response to a growing pool of care workers and senior care workers in the skilled worker route who no longer have sponsorship (e.g. because their sponsors have been unable to offer sufficient work), changes are being made in relation to their recruitment. Specifically, sponsors will be required to recruit from a designated pool of workers before seeking to sponsor new recruits from other immigration routes or from overseas.

In order to ensure that this requirement is adhered to, sponsors will need to provide confirmation from a relevant regional or sub-regional partnership that they have tried to recruit in this way, and confirm that no suitable workers were available from this pool.  This is somewhat reminiscent of the old resident labour market tests. 

These changes relate only to care jobs with working locations entirely in England and will not apply to workers in England who were already sponsored as care workers before the changes take effect. 

Salary threshold changes 

As anticipated, changes have also been made to update the minimum salary floor for skilled workers from £23,200 per year (or £11.90 per hour) to £25,000 per year (or £12.82 per hour).

The rates for individual occupations in healthcare and education are also being updated, where they are drawn from national pay scales, so that they continue to reflect the latest pay scales. 

Changes are being made to the rules concerning deductions from an applicant’s salary. These changes are being made: 

• to ensure consistency with how paid allowances for the same purposes are treated,
• to mitigate against sponsorship costs being passed on to applicants, and 
• to close an unintended loophole whereby applicants could effectively pay towards their own salary through investing in their sponsor’s business. 

What does this mean for you? 

The above changes will come into effect from 9 April 2025.  Sponsors will need to be aware of the potential impact of the increased salary thresholds and the care worker changes on their ability to recruit. Once implemented, the planned changes will significantly impact employers’ ability to recruit from overseas and the potential timescales for recruitment processes.  In particular, NHS sponsors may find that this impacts on their ability to sponsor entry level Band 3 staff.   

Whilst the proposed requirement to recruit from a pool of established UK resident care workers seems logical, the practicality of such an approach, and its impact on recruitment processes and skills shortages remains to be seen.  

We anticipate that the details of the changes will become clearer once the amended rules are published. In addition to the above, we are aware that further changes are likely, given the Government’s White Paper on immigration expected later this year.   

How Capsticks can help 

Capsticks has significant experience in supporting employers with international recruitment and immigration issues. If you would like to receive advice, training or need further guidance on these changes (either generally or in relation to a specific case) please contact Nicole Johnson and Nadirur Choudhury.