Announcement from Yvette Cooper triggers provider warnings of ‘extreme workforce shortages’, with international recruitment having been a “lifeline” for sector
by Mithran Samuel on May 11, 2025 in Adults, Workforce
Home secretary Yvette Cooper (copyright: House of Commons)
The government will end the recruitment of care workers from abroad later this year, home secretary Yvette Cooper announced today.
Cooper told the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg that social care providers will no longer be able to recruit staff from abroad via health and care visas.
Instead, they will need to draw on the domestic labour force, people on other immigration visas or the pool of overseas staff who had been left without a job after losing visa sponsorship.
The news has sparked alarm from social care bodies who argued that international recruitment had been a “lifeline” for the sector in recent years and that the decision risked “extreme workforce shortages” and harm to disabled and older people.
Sharp rise in overseas recruitment up to 2024
Currently, social care providers may recruit people from abroad into care worker or senior care worker posts on the basis that they are so-called shortage occupations, so long as they meet a salary threshold (£25,000), though the system has been tightened up recently (see below).
These rules, introduced in 2021 and 2022, enabled a sharp rise in international recruitment into social care from 2022-24 that allowed the sector to reduce vacancy levels from a record high.
But in its immigration white paper, published tomorrow, the government will severely tighten up the system of recruitment on skilled worker visas such that this is generally only available for graduate level jobs.
For all other roles, recruitment from abroad would be “strictly time-limited”, granted only on the basis of strong evidence of shortages in critical roles and where employers were committed to increasing their numbers of domestic staff.
End to international recruitment into care sector
In her appearance on Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg, Cooper indicated there would be no such concessions for the care sector.
“We’re going to change those rules this year to prevent the care worker visa from being used to recruit from abroad,” the home secretary said.
She said that instead, employers would have to rely on staff from the following groups:
- The domestic labour force;
- Existing staff on health and care visas, whose visas will continue to be extendable;
- People from abroad who are in the UK on other immigration routes, such as student, graduate or family visas;
- The pool of workers brought in on the health and care visa but who are without a job because their employer’s sponsorship had been cancelled, including in cases of exploitation.
Requirement to recruit from pool of displaced staff
The government recently introduced rules requiring social care employers in England to try and recruit from this pool before seeking staff from abroad. However, under the white paper, care providers will not be able to recruit staff from abroad on skilled worker visas at all.
Cooper told Kuennsberg: “There’s more than 10,000 people who came on a care visa where the sponsorship visa was cancelled, effectively they came to jobs that weren’t effectively here or were not of the proper standard.
“They are here and care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people, rather than recruiting from abroad. So we are closing recruitment from abroad.”
She said that this policy would be introduced alongside the planned fair pay agreement for adult social care. Under this, an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body would be set up to set pay and conditions for the sector, with the intent being that this will drive up salaries and make the sector more attractive for people from the UK.
Warning of ‘extreme workforce shortages’
However, provider leaders warned that the fair pay agreement was years away from implementation and the government had not allocated any funding to implementing it.
In the meantime, withdrawing the option of overseas recruitment risked “extreme workforce shortages” and harm to people needing care and support, said the Homecare Association.
Its chief executive, Jane Townson, said: “International recruitment is a lifeline for the home care sector, enabling us to provide vital support to older and disabled people in their own homes. Care providers are already struggling to recruit within the UK.
“We are deeply concerned the government has not properly considered what will happen to the millions of people who depend on care at home to live safely and independently.”
‘A crushing blow to an already fragile sector’
For fellow provider representative body Care England, chief executive Martin Green described the decision as “a crushing blow to an already fragile sector”.
“For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs and mounting vacancies,” he added. “International recruitment wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was a lifeline. Taking it away now, with no warning, no funding, and no alternative, is not just short-sighted – it’s cruel.”
adult social care workforce, care workers, immigration, overseas care staff