Hiring care staff from abroad: Care staff visas explained

The care industry has been faced with a shortage of workers, meaning that companies are under increasing pressure to fill available roles with qualified employees.

To help address this shortage, a number of care sector roles have been added to the UK Shortage Occupation List (SOL) from 16 February 2022, and will be eligible for Health and Care visas for one year.

This means that non-UK workers can apply to work in the UK so long as they meet the visa eligibility requirements and their employer holds a valid sponsor licence. The roles include care assistants, care workers, carers, home care assistants, home carers and support workers in nursing homes.

Note: EU nationals who were already living and working in the UK before Brexit came into force (1 January 2021) don't need a sponsorship to work here.

But even with this information, it’s not always easy to navigate your way through the sponsorship and visa process. This page will outline the key points you need to be aware of to help you decide whether sponsorship is the right step for you and your company, and how to get the ball rolling if you decide to go ahead.

Pros and cons of hiring from abroad

To decide whether hiring workers from overseas is going to be suitable for you and your company, it’s a good idea to be aware of both the pros and the cons.

Pros of hiring workers from overseas include:

• By expanding your search range, you may be able to find employees who are better qualified for the role than you would if searching locally. When you sponsor an employee, they are required to prove that they are suitable for the role. For a Health and Care Worker visa, the employee must be a qualified doctor, nurse, health professional or adult social care professional. This reduces the chance of employees being unsuitable for the role, and may even save money in the longer term.
• Employees who are sponsored are likely to be committed to the role and the company. Because the sponsorship process can be complex, for both the employer and the employee, it’s unlikely that you will receive applicants who are not fully committed to carrying out the sponsorship for the duration of time agreed. So long as working conditions are good, sponsored employees will likely be dedicated and valuable members of your team.
• Adaptability and innovation. Employees coming from overseas can bring skills and methods of practice from their own countries, as well as learning how your business operates. This can lead to evolution in how your business delivers its care, creating a better experience for your clients.

Cons of hiring workers from overseas include:

• It can be a slow process. If you do yet have a sponsor licence, this alone can take up to 8 weeks, and the Home Office is advising to currently around 2-3 months. It might be a good idea to get this licence in place, even if you are not currently looking to recruit. This will mean that you save this time when it comes to it
• It comes with additional costs than recruiting locally. More detail about the individual costs is provided below

How much does hiring from abroad cost?

There are a range of costs that come with sponsoring an employee. It’s important to note that expenses begin from when you apply to be a sponsor (licence fees), so if you are unsure about whether or not you want to go ahead, it will be beneficial to decide before you pay out.

To sponsor an employee, you will need to consider:

• Sponsor licence fees - To apply for a licence, employers will need to pay a fee. This will be £536 for small businesses and charities, or £1,476 for medium and large organisations. You can pay £500 for your application to be processed and decided within 10 working days
• Assigning the sponsorship certificate – This costs £199 and comes before visa application begins
• Cost of the visa – The cost of a visa is £232 for up to 3 years or £464 for up to five years. You have to pay the minimum amount, even if you want to sponsor a worker for less than three years
• Immigration Skills Charge – This is £364 per year for small sponsors, or £1000 per year for large companies. If you choose to employ a person switching from a Student route to the Skilled worker route, then you will be exempt from the immigration skills charge
• Salary – You must pay the employee at least £10.10 per hour or £20,480 per year (whichever is higher). You cannot pay less than this amount, but you might need to pay more if the role is particularly specialised or requires advanced qualifications.

Depending on the individual circumstances, you might also need to think about:

• The cost of travel to the UK
• Accommodation for the employee (they must be accommodated for at least the first month after they arrive to the UK. In some cases, employees may be able to cover the cost themselves)
• Living costs. Employees need to provide evidence that they have the funds to support themselves for a short time once in the UK (this is around £1,200). Some companies may choose to contribute to this to support the employee until they have received their first wage.

What type of visa will my employee need?

There are different types of visas available depending on the type of worker you want to sponsor.

The two types of visa relevant to the health care sector are:

• Health and Care Worker visa
• Skilled Worker visa.

If you are specifically looking to sponsor care workers, then the employee will require a Health and Care Worker visa. This type of visa covers most jobs in the care sector, including doctors, nurses, health professionals and adult social care professionals.

For roles not covered by the Health and Care Worker visa, prospective employees might need a Skilled Worker visa. Skilled Worker visas are for specific roles, these are all included on the list of eligible occupations.

To find out if a job is eligible, you can check using the Occupation Code Search Tool. To use this, you need to know the Occupation Code of the job you are looking for. 

Both Health and Care Worker visas and Skilled Worker visas can be obtained if the employer has either of the two types of licences:

• Workers licence – this is for skilled or long-term employment
• Temporary Worker licence – this is for specific types of temporary employment, including seasonal, charity and religious workers.

You can find more information about the different types of employment included in each licence here.

How do I hire care workers from abroad?

To hire care workers from abroad, you need a sponsor licence. You can apply for this online

Eligibility

Before you can apply for a sponsor licence, you need to make sure that you, the employer, are eligible.

You should be eligible as long as:

• You have not had a sponsor licence revoked in the last 12 months
• You do not have any unspent convictions for certain crimes, including:
  • Immigration offences, such as knowingly employed somebody who has entered the UK illegally, overstayed, failed to comply with conditions of their entry
  • Certain other (unspent) offences, such as fraud, forgery or money laundering. You can view the full list of offences here
• You, as the employer, and your staff are based in the UK
• Your business has not been subject to bankruptcy or debt relief restriction or undertaking.

You must also have proof that:

• You have staff who can fulfil necessary roles in manging sponsorships and sponsored employees (see further down this article for details)
• Are registered with you country’s regulatory body. These are:
  • England: Care Quality Commission
  • Scotland: Care Inspectorate
  • Wales: Care Inspectorate Wales
  • Northern Ireland: Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority.

Getting your sponsor licence

To apply to be a sponsor, you will need to register online and then complete an application. This might take a little time, but you can save your application and come back to it so long as you make a note of your User ID.

You will be given your User ID when you register. This ID will not be provided again, you should save this straight away to make sure you are able to come back to an application or check the progress.

To start your application, visit the government application site.

Once you have your licence, you can then request to be allocated a Certificate of Sponsorship.

This certificate will be assigned to your prospective employee (so you will need to have selected a specific person). They can then apply for their entry clearance based on this certificate. Once they have proven themselves to be eligible, plans can go ahead to get the employee started.  

Managing your sponsored employees

You need to have proper systems in place to hire and monitor your sponsored employees.

Once you have a sponsor licence, you’ll be able to use UK Visas and Immigration’s SMS log in to do this.

You must have staff members who manage sponsored employees. Necessary roles include:

• An authorising officer who is responsible for the staff who use SMS. This should be a senior member of staff
• A key contact who speaks to UK Visas and Immigration
• A level 1 user who does the day-to-day monitoring using the SMS. You can also have a level 2 user once you’ve got a sponsor licence if you’d like to; level 2 users (or additional level 1 users) don’t need to be permanent staff members.

You can have different people to fulfil each of these roles, or one or two people who take more than one on.

The people taking on these roles must be suitable, that is to say that:

• They do not have any unspent criminal convictions
• They have no prior convictions for immigration offences
• They have not been reported to UK Visas and Immigration
• They have not been fined by UK Visas and Immigration in the last 12 months
• They have not been a ‘key person’ involved a sponsor licence that has been revoked in the last 12 months
• They are based in the UK.

These staff members are responsible for:

• Hiring employees from overseas
• Doing necessary checks to ensure that they can legally move to the UK, work with vulnerable people and are properly qualified for their job
• Issue certificates of sponsorship to candidates you want to offer a job
• Keep UKVI informed about employees hired from overseas
• Keep proper documentation.

If they fail to fulfil these responsibilities, your sponsor licence may be withdrawn.