Why Immigration Compliance Must Remain A Priority For Care Providers

When the Skilled Worker visa route closed to new overseas recruitment of care workers and senior care workers in July 2025, care providers might have expected immigration to become less of a workforce concern.

The reality is very different.

The sector still employs thousands of sponsored workers, while the staffing pressures that drove care homes and domi-ciliary care providers to recruit internationally have not gone away. With the route closed, retaining the international work-force already in place has become even more important.

At the same time, Home Office scrutiny of sponsors has intensified considerably. According to Government figures, 1,948 sponsor licences were revoked between July 2024 and June 2025, more than double the 937 revoked during the previ-ous 12 months. The care sector is under particular scrutiny, with around a third of sponsor licence revocations between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2025 attributed to businesses in the “Human Health and Social Worker activities” industry (as reported by the Work Rights Centre).

For care providers, the focus has now shifted from overseas recruitment to retaining their existing spon-sored workforce and ensuring they continue to meet their compliance obligations.

WHEN COMPLIANCE BECOMES AN OPERATIONAL PROBLEM

For care providers, losing a sponsor licence can quickly become an operational issue. Revocation puts the position of sponsored workers at risk, with affected employees having to find alternative sponsorship or ulti-mately leave the UK. For a care home reliant on internationally recruited staff, this can mean losing experi-enced employees and creating significant workforce gaps.

That risk is magnified by existing staffing pressures. The latest Skills for Care report reveals that England's adult social care sector had around 111,000 vacant posts as of March 2025, equivalent to a vacancy rate of 7 per cent. Losing experienced staff due to compliance issues can put additional pressure on rotas and remaining employees, with potential consequences for service delivery and continuity of care.

WHERE PROVIDERS CAN GO WRONG

For care providers managing a busy workforce, sponsor compliance can be complex, particularly as immi-gration requirements continue to evolve. Issues can arise through everyday processes, from record keeping and monitoring visa expiry dates and right-to-work requirements, to ensuring sponsored workers' roles and salaries remain consistent with the terms of their sponsorship.

This can become more challenging where responsibility is shared across different teams or individual care homes. Changes to an employee's role, pay or working arrangements may appear routine, but they can have immigration implications and may need to be reported to the Home Office.

Getting these requirements wrong can put a provider's sponsor licence at risk, while failures to meet right-to-work requirements can carry separate consequences, including civil penalties of up to £60,000 per worker where someone is found to be working illegally.

A common issue we have been encountering recently is sponsors falling foul of Home Office delays in processing requests to increase allocations of Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS), which are necessary to facilitate in-country applications (including extensions for existing staff members). Failure to anticipate the time needed to secure the allocation, including routine Home Office “further information” requests, suffi-ciently far in advance, can have major knock-on effects in workforce planning, compliance and the potential for employment law implications.

Where a business has existing workers with forthcoming visa expiries but no CoS available to assign to facilitate an extension, they will face the stark choice of dismissing the worker due to the loss of right to work or making an extension application that is not supported by a CoS while waiting for the allocation to be processed. This is far from ideal from a sponsor compliance perspective.

MAKING COMPLIANCE A GOVERNANCE PRIORITY

Sponsor licence compliance should be viewed as more than a back-office administrative task. It is a gov-ernance issue directly linked to a provider's ability to retain staff and maintain a stable workforce.

Care providers in England should already be familiar with CQC requirements around safe staffing and good governance. Immigration compliance should sit alongside these responsibilities, with senior leaders having appropriate oversight of the sponsor licence and clear responsibility for compliance.

This means taking a proactive approach. Regular internal audits can help identify potential issues early, with particular attention paid to whether HR and sponsorship records are up to date, right-to-work checks are being completed correctly, and sponsored workers' roles and salaries continue to reflect the terms of their sponsorship.

For groups operating across multiple homes, clear lines of communication are particularly important. Managers should understand when changes affecting sponsored workers need to be escalated, so that any immigration implications can be addressed at the right time.

External specialist guidance can also help providers take a proactive approach to compliance. An inde-pendent compliance review will help identify gaps that may otherwise go unnoticed, while seeking advice early when a potential issue is identified gives providers more opportunity to address it before it develops into a more serious problem.

The immigration landscape for social care may have changed, but the need for careful workforce plan-ning has not. With fewer options to recruit directly from overseas, retaining experienced sponsored staff takes on even greater importance.

Providers that embed immigration compliance into their wider governance and workforce planning will be better placed to navigate that transition and build greater resilience for the years ahead.

Originally published by The Carer