A government crackdown on visas for overseas workers could put overstretched care homes under threat of closure, with tens of thousands fewer staff coming to the UK, The Independent can reveal.
Applications for Britain’s health and care worker visa are at a record low after care workers were prevented from bringing children and other dependants with them in a bid to curb climbing migration numbers.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, when the new rules came in, there were 129,000 applicants, but that plummeted to just 26,000 in the year to March 2025, according to government figures.
The revelation comes as care homes struggle to retain staff, with more than 100,000 vacancies across England last year, a rate of 8 per cent and three times the national average.
Age UK warned that overseas recruits were “keeping many services afloat” and some care homes could be forced to shut if they could not find alternatives, piling more pressure on NHS hospitals.
And the crisis looks set to get even worse as new rules, brought in by the Labour government in March, mean overseas workers will only get a visa if they earn over £25,000 a year. This will impact healthcare assistants, who support nurses by carrying out clinical tasks such as blood tests, 13 per cent of whom are from overseas.
Vicky Haines, managing director of care home provider Kingsway Care, accused the government of “making recruitment decisions they are unqualified to do” and warned that without major reforms, the sector will continue to “buckle under pressure”.
And she said international displaced workers, who were already in the UK but had had their employee sponsorship revoked, were not the only answer.
“To suggest the pool of displaced workers already in the UK is the ultimate solution for all care providers is extremely short-sighted,” she told The Independent. “The care sector is being punished for governmental failings.
“The Home Office should be held accountable for a poorly considered visa application process, with an outright lack of necessary checks and balances at the point of entry, resulting in the high number of displaced workers.
“Care providers remain committed to delivering safe, dignified, and compassionate care, but we cannot do it alone.”
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: “It is widely agreed that social care staff coming here from abroad have kept many services afloat over the last few years, when otherwise they would have struggled because of too many vacancies.
“If it proves impossible to recruit and retain enough staff, services sometimes even have to close, causing huge disruption and distress to existing clients… All this spells bad news for the NHS, our hospitals especially, which will often end up picking up the pieces if social care services are inadequate in a local area, since if older people don’t get the care and support they need, their health is put at risk.”
Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, told The Independent that curbs on visas make it harder for care services to recruit staff when demand is only growing.
“After years of severe staff shortages and more than 100,000 vacancies today across trusts in England, measures that put off qualified people from overseas coming to the NHS are a worry,” she said.
A report from Skills for Care, which collects employment data for social care providers, said that in April to June last year an estimated 8,000 international recruits were joining the independent sector in England, down from an average of 26,000 per quarter the year before.
And Nuffield Trust researcher Nina Hemmings told The Independent that March 2025 saw the lowest number of monthly applicants to UK’s health and care worker scheme since the data was first published, and it had decreased by 70 per cent since March 2024.
“The social care sector relies on skilled overseas workers to fill posts, stabilise services, and deliver care and support to the people who need it. There has not been a proper assessment by the government of how sudden changes to immigration rules will impact services and people who draw on care,” she said.
Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, chair of the health and social care committee, told The Independent: “During our inquiry [into the sector], we have heard that amongst the many problems plaguing the care system and providers are the workforce issues of recruitment and retention, which we learned have led to a very high vacancy rate of over 8 per cent, three times the national average.
“Against this context, news that the number of applicants for skilled worker and health and care visas to the UK has dropped is a cause for serious concern.”
And Martin Green, chief executive for Care England, which represents care homes across the UK said the government’s changes were having a “significant impact” on overseas recruitment “but they have not got a strategic and coherent approach to developing the UK workforce”.
A government spokesperson for the Home Office said it recognised the contribution care workers from overseas make to the NHS and social care services, but insisted net migration “must come down”.
“This month, new rules requiring care providers to prioritise international care workers who are already in England came into force, which will get people back to work, reduce our reliance on further overseas recruitment, and make sure our social care sector has the care professionals it needs,” they said.
