New rules to prioritise recruiting care workers in England

Employers will be required to prioritise recruiting international care workers already in England before recruiting from overseas.

From 9 April, care providers who want to recruit a new worker from overseas will have to first prove that they have attempted to recruit a worker from within England who needs new sponsorship. This ensures that those who came to the UK to pursue a career in adult social care can do so and will help end the reliance on overseas recruitment as we restore order to our immigration system through our Plan for Change.

Significant work has been ongoing across government, in collaboration with the care sector, to ensure high standards across the immigration system, and to support care workers into alternative jobs when their sponsor has had their licence removed. Under our Plan for Change, we will set out a comprehensive plan to restore order to our broken immigration system, linking immigration, skills and visa systems to grow our domestic skills, end reliance on overseas labour and boost economic growth.

As well as continuing to tackle exploitation, the government is also continuing its clampdown on abuse in the immigration system with changes to the Short-Term Student route.

The visa is designed for those studying an English language course in the UK for between 6 and 11 months, however, there are rising concerns that the route is being abused by those without a genuine intention to study or to leave the UK at the end of their course. In light of this troubling trend, tough new rules will give expanded powers for caseworkers to refuse visa applications which are suspected of being non-genuine.

Seema Malhotra, Minister for Migration and Citizenship, said: 

Those who have come to the UK to support our adult care sector should have the opportunity to do so, free from abuse and exploitation.

We have already taken action to ensure employers are not able to flout the rules with little consequence or exploit international workers for costs they were always supposed to pay.

We are now going further, requiring employers in England to prioritise recruiting international care workers who are already here and seeking new sponsorship, before recruiting from overseas.

The new requirements continue government action announced in November to crack down on employers who abuse the visa system; barring those who repeatedly break immigration or employment laws from hiring overseas workers and will help support those workers into new jobs.

The changes announced last year also ban companies from charging workers for the cost of their sponsorship, which has never been intended and led to exploitation, unfair treatment of staff and unsustainable levels of debt in the care sector.