Health and Care Worker Visa solicitors advising doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals on sponsorship, salary, dependants, switching, refusals and ILR.
The Health and Care Worker Visa is a specialist work route for eligible doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals and certain adult social care workers who wish to work in the United Kingdom.
It forms part of the wider Skilled Worker route, but qualifying applicants benefit from important advantages, including reduced visa fees, exemption from the Immigration Health Surcharge and a potential route to Indefinite Leave to Remain.
The route is nevertheless highly technical.
Eligibility depends not simply upon working in healthcare, but upon the employer, occupation code, job duties, salary, sponsorship arrangements, English language and individual immigration history.
The rules have also changed materially in recent years, particularly for care workers, senior care workers and medium-skilled occupations. Sponsorship, salary, occupation code, dependants and settlement are central areas requiring careful analysis.
As at August 2026, Appendix Skilled Worker was most recently updated on 30 July 2026, and new applicants making their first Skilled Worker application from 8 January 2026 generally need English at CEFR B2 rather than the previous B1 level.
At Knights & Shah Solicitors, we advise healthcare professionals on initial applications, switching, extensions, changes of employer, dependant applications, refusals and settlement.
The Health and Care Worker Visa allows eligible health and adult social care professionals to undertake qualifying sponsored employment in the UK.
An applicant will generally need:
Eligible employers can include the NHS, organisations providing medical services to the NHS and qualifying organisations providing adult social care.
Simply working for a hospital, care organisation or healthcare business does not automatically make someone eligible.
The proposed role itself must satisfy the Skilled Worker and Health and Care requirements.
The Health and Care Worker Visa sits within the Skilled Worker system.
Applicants must therefore satisfy the core Skilled Worker requirements, but qualifying health and care professionals receive additional benefits.
These include:
The Health and Care route should therefore be viewed as a specialised version of Skilled Worker sponsorship, not a completely separate immigration system.
An applicant will generally need to demonstrate that they:
Additional requirements can arise depending upon the profession.
For example, regulated healthcare occupations may require appropriate professional registration before employment begins.
Professional registration and immigration permission are separate requirements.
A wide range of occupations can potentially qualify.
Depending upon the current occupation list, this can include roles in:
Eligibility depends upon the actual occupation code and duties, not simply the job title.
A role called “healthcare manager”, for example, should not automatically be assigned a particular occupation code without comparing the actual duties against the relevant SOC classification.
Current Skilled Worker rules identify the eligible Health and Care occupations and distinguish between higher-skilled, national-pay-scale and certain medium-skilled roles.
Yes.
The Health and Care Worker Visa is a sponsored work route.
Before applying, you normally need a confirmed offer of qualifying employment from an organisation authorised by the Home Office to sponsor workers.
A job offer by itself is not sufficient if the employer:
Applicants should therefore verify both the role and the sponsor.
A Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) is an electronic sponsorship record assigned by the employer.
It contains important information including:
The CoS is central to the visa application.
Its contents should correspond with the employment contract, salary, job description and information entered into the immigration application.
Errors can create avoidable refusal risks.
The occupation code can determine:
The correct code should therefore be determined from the substance of the job, not simply whichever title appears closest to the employer’s preferred description.
This has become particularly important following the July 2025 changes to Skilled Worker skill levels and the transition arrangements for certain medium-skilled occupations.
There is no single salary figure applying to every Health and Care Worker.
The salary depends upon the occupation code and the applicable salary framework.
For many healthcare occupations where national pay scales apply, the applicant generally needs to be paid at least:
£25,000 per year or the relevant national-pay-scale going rate, whichever is higher.
For certain Health and Care occupations subject to different salary rules, the usual threshold can instead be:
£31,300 per year or the applicable lower going rate, whichever is higher.
There are also circumstances where reduced thresholds can apply, including qualifying new entrants, relevant PhD holders and some Immigration Salary List roles.
Salary should therefore be assessed against the specific occupation code, not against one generic Health and Care figure.
Many doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals fall within occupations where the immigration going rate is tied to national pay scales.
This means salary eligibility can depend upon:
These rates apply not only to NHS employers but can also apply to qualifying equivalent roles in the private sector.
Applicants and sponsors should therefore avoid assuming that any salary above £25,000 automatically qualifies.
The position for care workers and senior care workers has changed significantly.
From 22 July 2025, the immigration route closed to new overseas applications for care workers and senior care workers.
This means an overseas applicant cannot ordinarily secure a new care-worker position and make a fresh Health and Care Worker Visa application from abroad under occupation codes 6135 or 6136 in the way that was previously possible.
Transitional provisions remain important for certain workers already in the UK.
An individual’s current immigration status, sponsorship history and employment should therefore be examined before assuming that the care-worker route remains available.
Potentially.
Current transitional arrangements can permit certain in-country applications where the worker already forms part of the UK social-care workforce and satisfies the applicable Skilled Worker requirements.
The exact test depends upon the worker’s sponsorship history and the date of the relevant Certificate of Sponsorship.
These cases should be checked against the current Rules rather than older care-worker guidance.
Where a worker is being sponsored as a care worker or senior care worker in England, the sponsoring employer must satisfy the relevant Care Quality Commission registration requirements.
An organisation describing itself as a care provider does not automatically mean that it can sponsor migrant care workers.
This should be checked particularly carefully where a worker intends to move to a new employer.
The rules are now significantly restricted.
A partner or children may still qualify in limited situations, including where the worker has been continuously employed in the UK as a care worker or senior care worker and held qualifying Skilled Worker or Health and Care Worker permission since before 11 March 2024.
Other exceptions include certain UK-born children and specific single-parent situations.
A person starting a new care-worker route after the restriction took effect should therefore not assume that their family can automatically accompany them.
Doctors, nurses and other eligible Health and Care Workers who are not affected by the specific dependant restrictions can generally bring qualifying family members.
Dependants can include:
Separate restrictions also apply to certain medium-skilled occupations unless the worker has been continuously sponsored in that category since before 22 July 2025.
Each dependant’s eligibility should therefore be checked individually.
Where the maintenance requirement applies, the main applicant will normally need:
£1,270
The money must generally have been held for 28 consecutive days, with the end of that period falling within 31 days of the application.
Proof is not normally required where:
Additional maintenance funds are normally required for dependants:
The relevant exemptions and evidence should be checked before applying.
One of the strongest financial advantages of the Health and Care Worker Visa is that eligible applicants do not pay the Immigration Health Surcharge.
Qualifying dependant partners and children are also exempt.
For a family receiving several years of permission, this can represent a substantial saving compared with the standard Skilled Worker route.
This is an important area where older online guidance can now be misleading.
For people making their first Skilled Worker application on or after 8 January 2026, the English-language requirement generally increased to:
CEFR B2
The requirement covers reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Transitional provisions can apply to some workers who were already in the route under earlier requirements.
Depending upon the applicant, English may be established through:
The correct requirement should be established from the applicant’s immigration history and application date.
Eligible healthcare professionals can apply from overseas where the relevant requirements are satisfied.
An application can require:
The visa can be applied for up to three months before the employment start date shown on the CoS.
Many applicants already lawfully in Britain can potentially switch into the Health and Care Worker route.
However, switching is not permitted from every immigration category.
Before applying, the applicant should establish:
Students and Graduate Visa holders can potentially switch where the relevant requirements are satisfied.
A Graduate Visa is not mandatory before moving from Student to Health and Care Worker.
Where the Student switching rules allow it and appropriate sponsorship has been secured, moving directly into the sponsored route may be possible.
Home Office fees changed on 8 April 2026.
The current Health and Care Worker Visa fees are:
Up to 3 years: £324 per applicant
More than 3 years: £628 per applicant
The same Health and Care fee applies whether the application is made inside or outside the UK.
Eligible dependants pay the corresponding Health and Care application fee and remain exempt from the Immigration Health Surcharge where the dependant requirements are met.
The Health and Care Worker route benefits from faster published service standards than the ordinary Skilled Worker route.
As at August 2026, the standard service target is:
3 weeks
for applications made inside or outside the UK.
Faster services may also be available.
Applications can take longer where documents require verification, an interview is required or personal circumstances need additional consideration.
Health and Care Worker permission can generally be granted for up to five years at a time, depending upon the period of sponsorship.
The visa can potentially be extended repeatedly while the worker continues to qualify.
For many professionals, however, the more important long-term objective will be Indefinite Leave to Remain after five years of qualifying residence.
An extension is possible where the applicant continues to satisfy the route requirements.
A straightforward extension will often involve continuing:
However, updated rules at the time of extension should always be checked.
Changes in salary thresholds or sponsorship rules can affect eligibility even where the underlying employment continues.
A Health and Care Worker can change employer, but the process normally requires new sponsorship.
The new employer will generally need to:
The worker will normally need to apply to update their visa before starting the new sponsored employment.
For care-worker roles in England, CQC requirements should also be checked.
A promotion or internal transfer can also affect immigration status.
If the new position falls under a different occupation code, an updated immigration application may be required even where the employer remains unchanged.
Before accepting a significant role change, check:
Potentially.
The Skilled Worker rules permit supplementary employment in specified circumstances.
Whether additional work is allowed depends upon the nature of the second role and whether the worker continues to meet the conditions of their sponsored employment.
Someone considering substantial additional employment should check the current rules before beginning the role rather than assuming unrestricted second-job rights.
Because this is a sponsored route, termination or redundancy can affect immigration status.
The sponsor will normally have reporting obligations to the Home Office.
The worker may need to:
Early advice can be particularly important where sponsored employment ends unexpectedly.
Sponsor licence suspension or revocation can also place a worker’s immigration status at risk.
The consequences depend upon the Home Office action and the worker’s circumstances.
It may become necessary to find another sponsor, obtain a new CoS or consider another immigration route.
Workers should not assume that their visa remains unaffected simply because they personally complied with the rules.
Yes.
The Health and Care Worker route forms part of Skilled Worker and is a route to settlement.
An eligible worker can generally consider applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain after five years of qualifying residence, subject to the settlement requirements.
These can include:
Applicants should monitor their travel history throughout the five-year period rather than attempting to reconstruct it shortly before settlement.
Applications can be refused because of:
A refusal should be reviewed before another application is submitted.
Depending upon the circumstances, the appropriate response may involve Administrative Review, a corrected fresh application or another immigration strategy.
The key issue is identifying precisely what went wrong.
At Knights & Shah Solicitors, we can assist with:
Our approach is to consider both the immediate visa application and the longer-term immigration strategy, particularly where the applicant intends to remain in Britain and progress towards settlement.
If you require advice contact Knights & Shah Solicitors.
We provide clear, solicitor led advice, strategic case planning and robust court representation to protect our clients.
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