The new immigration rules are now in force, and they’re set to have a major impact on UK employers. The reforms cover everything from student visas to settlement routes, but the biggest challenge for HR is the one affecting sponsored workers – the Skilled Worker route has been tightened significantly with higher salary thresholds, stricter eligibility, and fewer roles qualifying. We’ll speak to an immigration expert about what has changed, why it matters, and what HR teams should be doing now to help the business.
The new rules came into force on 22 July and represent the most far-reaching immigration reforms in years. They affect recruitment, sponsorship, settlement and more, but the Skilled Worker route is where the pressure is already being felt. The government has raised salary and skill thresholds, limited which roles qualify, and created a more complex set of rules depending on when a worker was first sponsored. That’s left many employers auditing their sponsored workforce now, trying to work out who may fall short at renewal, and whether salaries will need to increase to retain key staff.
Pinsent Masons’ immigration team has published an in-depth analysis of the changes which has been posted to the Out-Law website. It highlights the legal and practical risks for employers, particularly around internal pay fairness, sponsorship eligibility, and avoiding inadvertent discrimination. It also warns that delay could narrow the options available.
But it is the change to the Skilled Worker route that will have the biggest impact so let’s get a view on that. Earlier I caught up with immigration lawyer Alex Wright, who joined me by video link from Manchester to discuss it:
Alex Wright: “Yes, there's been a general trend with the Skilled Worker route over the past couple of years of just an extreme tightening. The big change that we saw in July was the implications of a raise in both skill and salary level. The Home Office have broadly changed it so that instead of being able to sponsor workers, skilled workers, at school-leaver sort of level that's now been raised to where it used to be back in early 2020, at degree level. So the number of mid-range positions that are available for sponsorship are now significantly limited. This, I would note, is only for people who are new to the Skilled Worker route. So if you are already sponsored at one of those mid skilled routes, between school leaver and degree level, people who are on those routes can continue to be sponsored, and people who are coming in for the first time since July of this year, late July, will have to meet those higher skill requirements. So essentially, what this means is, when employers are looking at the workplace, they're going to have to consider not only the skill level of the job they're looking for, but also when their prospective employees entered the skilled worker labour market, and whether they are entitled to be sponsored at that skill level or not. So it's all become a little bit more complicated and a little bit more restrictive.”
Joe Glavina: “How will these changes affect day-to-day recruitment and workforce planning, especially in sectors already struggling to fill roles?”
Alex Wright: “Yes, this has definitely been a massive topic of conversation with our clients lately, who are suddenly finding that people that they would regularly sponsor are no longer available to them. In some ways, there is still workforce available. If you're trying to find people in the UK, you can find people who are potentially sponsored before the changes in July, who are still eligible to be sponsored at these codes, even if they're changing employer. The issue is bringing in new people to the labour market. So what we are certainly seeing is a lot of sponsors looking at non-sponsored routes, if they're available. Certainly there's been a lot of interest more recently in trying to recruit people on the Graduate route but the problem is the Graduate route is in itself limited in terms of timeframe. Most people can only be enough for two years and that's going to be reduced to 18 months next year. So there's a definite emphasis on employers to try and find people in the domestic labour market and, certainly, a lot of the rhetoric that the government have put around these changes has been about their emphasis to try and use additional costs that they want to put on employers to try and increase and train the domestic labour market. The problem is, we all know that that takes years, so whilst those changes may happen eventually, it's not of much benefit to employers right now.”
Joe Glavina: “What do you think HR should be doing now to mitigate risk and to stay compliant?”
Alex Wright: “So what we've been doing with a lot of companies is going over their entire sponsored workforce and trying to figure out who is on what sponsorship codes, who is eligible, who might have problems when it comes to extensions. The Home Office also reviews salary rates annually so it's a really good idea to have a look at your sponsored workforce and figure out who you're going to be able to sponsor further, what you're going to have to pay them, and if that's significantly different to what they're on now, whether or not you can plan for that. Another thing to be aware of is the Home Office do have what's known as a temporary shortage list. So this is a number of the professions that are no longer sponsorable that they're taken off the list as not being degree level where you still can sponsor workers. This list is subject to change. They've confirmed that the current list is going to be in its present form until, we believe, the end of 2026 but this does come with some restrictions. The biggest issue in that is that if you are sponsoring somebody in one of those temporary shortage professions they cannot bring dependents with them. So we have had circumstances where we've had clients go, we do want to bring this person, we do want to offer them a role, but it's not actually appealing to the international candidate because they can no longer bring a partner or dependents with them. So there's a lot more things to be aware of. So employers need to be aware of the skill level their workforce is at, the skill level of people they're bringing in and, also, I would say, it's worth doing a little audit and making sure that you've got your timeframe planned out so that you can be strategic about your hiring.”
The article by the Immigration Team which looks in detail at those changes to the Skilled Worker route which Alex talked about, as well as the other key changes which have been brought in, is called ‘How tightened immigration rules could impact UK companies in 2026’. It’s available now from the Out-Law website and we’ve included a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.
- Link to Out-Law analysis article: 'How tightened immigration rules could impact UK companies in 2026.’