Recruiting care staff after the overseas route closed: what the file has to show

The Sunday night shift runs 8pm to 8am on the first floor and needs two carers. One of those slots belonged to a senior care worker sponsored from overseas last year. She handed in her notice in June, and the post has sat on the bank list for six weeks. Recruiting care staff into that slot the way you filled it last time is no longer available to you.

Since 22 July 2025, a provider cannot sponsor a worker applying from outside the UK into occupation code 6135, care workers and home carers, or 6136, senior care workers. The change came in Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC 997, laid on 1 July 2025. The Home Office explanatory memorandum says it will "close entry clearance applications for Skilled Workers sponsored in these occupation codes".

What closed on 22 July 2025, and what is still open until 2028

Entry clearance closed. Switching from inside the UK survived, with conditions. Home Office sponsor guidance puts the position at SK4.31:

From 22 July 2025, if you wish to sponsor a care worker or senior care worker under occupation code 6135 or 6136, the worker must already be in the UK and be applying for permission to stay.

An application on that basis has to be made no later than 22 July 2028. After that, the transitional provision ends.

The condition attached to it reshapes how you hire. Appendix Skilled Worker sets it at SW 6.1B. The applicant "must have been legally working for the sponsor in one of these SOC 2020 occupation codes for at least the three months ending on the date the certificate of sponsorship was issued". Sponsorship follows three months of employment with you. Interviewing a stranger on Monday and sponsoring them on Friday is not a route that exists.

Workers already sponsored in the sector are not stranded by the closure. The Home Office and DHSC announcement of 11 May 2025 states that they "will be able to continue to extend their stay, change sponsors and apply to settle". Any certificate of sponsorship you assign still has to satisfy the conditions above.

Two 2026 statements of changes, HC 1691 and HC 259, say nothing about adult social care. The July 2025 position stands.

Sponsors used to have to try the pool of displaced international workers first. That requirement was removed from the sponsor guidance in April 2026, so contacting the DHSC regional partnerships is no longer a precondition of sponsorship.

Your sponsor licence depends on active CQC registration

In England, the licence and the registration stand or fall together. A sponsor in these occupation codes must be currently undertaking a regulated activity and hold active registration with the Care Quality Commission.

One group sits outside that condition. Appendix Skilled Worker carves it out at SW 6.1C, for workers previously granted permission under the old SOC 2010 codes 6145 and 6146 who have held continuous Skilled Worker permission since. For them, "the Care Quality Commission regulation requirement for these occupation codes does not apply". Check which of your sponsored staff sit inside it.

For the worker, a lost licence starts a countdown. GOV.UK tells anyone whose sponsor loses its licence that their visa "is limited to 60 days (or however long you have left on the visa if it's less than 60 days)". They then have to leave the job and leave the UK unless they make a new application in that time. A failure in the sponsor file is a staffing event on every shift that person covers.

You retain the documents the sponsor guidance specifies for each sponsored worker. You run a right to work check on any worker you sponsor, a duty that sits alongside the general employer one rather than inside it.

Reporting is where a well-run home slips. Under C1.13 a reportable change has to be reported within 10 working days of the event. The events include:

• non-attendance after 28 days
• unauthorised absence beyond 10 consecutive working days
• absence without pay or on reduced pay beyond four weeks
• a reduction in salary
• a change of work location
• stopping sponsorship

Each of those is something the rota knows first.

Where you are recruiting care staff from now

Skills for Care's size and structure report, published 24 June 2026, records 96,000 vacant posts in adult social care in England in 2025/26. The vacancy rate was 6.2 per cent, the lowest since 2015/16.

Underneath those totals the supply has changed hands. Posts filled by people with British nationality fell by 40,000 in a single year, and by 130,000 since the 2020/21 peak. Posts filled by non-British, non-EU nationals rose by 60,000.

An estimated 30,000 people arrived in the UK and started direct care roles in the independent sector in 2025/26. That is down from 50,000 the year before and 105,000 in 2023/24. Around 1,500 came on the Health and Care Worker visa, and Skills for Care puts 95 per cent of international recruits on other routes such as dependant, family and student permissions.

That last figure changes the mechanics of recruiting care staff. Almost all of your international intake now arrives on a permission you did not sponsor and cannot extend. Most are time-limited. A follow-up check before expiry is what keeps the statutory excuse alive.

Appendix D and Schedule 3 ask for the same person twice

Recruiting care staff on a sponsored basis produces two files on the same person. Two regulators want them, and neither will take the other's. Sponsor record-keeping sits in Appendix D. Per sponsored worker it asks for right to work evidence including eVisa screenshots, the advertisement and interview notes, and the contract. It also asks for payslips and bank transfer evidence, qualification certificates, previous employer references, absence records and DBS checks. Documents are held throughout sponsorship and until a year after it ends, or until a compliance officer confirms otherwise, whichever comes first.

Schedule 3 to the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 then requires its own file on the same person. It covers identity, conduct in previous care employment, qualifications, employment history and health. They are gathered once by whoever is recruiting, then held twice, for two regulators, under two retention regimes.

The Schedule 3 file is required in respect of each person employed, sponsored or not. That is why the two sets drift apart in precisely the cases that matter to a rota: the worker who comes off sponsorship, and the worker who was never on it.

Bank and agency cover carries its own right to work exposure

A week of gaps covered by six different bank carers carries six separate exposures instead of one. Civil penalties for employing someone without the right to work are set per worker, and they rise for a repeat breach.

From 1 October 2026 the Right to Work Scheme also covers engagement under a worker's contract and engagement of an individual sub-contractor. A civil penalty may only be imposed for those arrangements where the employment commenced on or after that date. A unit covering gaps with bank and agency carers is inside that scope from its next new engagement.

What the candidate sees when checks are set per role

DBS levels in adult social care are not uniform, and the difference turns on what the person does. DBS guidance is explicit: "You only need to carry out any of the activities once to be in regulated activity with adults". There is no frequency test of the kind that applies to work with children.

One domiciliary round can therefore need two different checks. The worker delivering personal care needs an enhanced check with an adults' barred list. The worker making weekly companionship calls only needs an enhanced check without the barred list. Both cost £49.50.

From the candidate's side, that distinction is invisible, and it should be. Someone applying for an evening personal care round opens a link on her phone. She photographs a passport and proof of address at the kitchen table. She answers the employment history questions with each gap prompted as it appears, then enters referee details for two recent care roles. There is no app download, and no call three days later asking for a document she believes she already sent.

Credentially runs the check set behind that link. The check set is built for the role being filled, so the personal care applicant and the companionship-only applicant are asked for different things without either having to work out which. Right to work verification and DBS sit inside the same flow, and references go out automatically with reminders. What comes out is one record with a logged activity trail. The monitoring record carries DBS and right to work expiry dates forward, which is where the sponsor file and the Schedule 3 file stop drifting apart.

Three shifts worked before anyone knew her barred list status

A bank carer is offered the Sunday night on the Thursday. Her enhanced DBS with adults' barred list check went in on the Monday and the certificate has not arrived. No barred list result is obtained before she starts. She works the round unsupervised, giving personal care to six residents on the first floor, and picks up two more shifts the following week.

By the third shift, four of the items Schedule 3 requires are on file. The employment history carries a fourteen-month gap with no written explanation. One of the two references has gone unanswered since the Tuesday and nobody has chased it. No qualification certificate has been supplied.

A clear DBS Adult First result before the Sunday would have allowed a supervised start. A documents link sent on the Thursday evening would have prompted the employment gap explanation and the qualification certificate, and an automated reminder would have chased the outstanding reference.

Recruiting care staff over the next twelve months

The switching route closes on 22 July 2028, and the three-month employment condition sits in front of it. Anyone you sponsor before that date has to be someone you already employ lawfully, on a permission you did not set, for the three months before the certificate is issued. You employ first and sponsor afterwards.

Recruiting care staff on that basis starts with a count most providers cannot produce today. You need to know how many current staff hold time-limited permission, when each permission expires, and which have worked for you long enough to be sponsorable inside the window. Most of those fields sit in different systems. Pulling them together is the work, and a single record fed by those systems is where those fields belong.

Twelve months from now, the providers still filling Sunday nights will be the ones who spent this year turning their existing time-limited staff into a sponsorable population. They will be able to show, per person, the date the three months started.

References

1. Home Office, Explanatory memorandum to the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC 997, 1 July 2025 (in force 22 July 2025). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-of-changes-to-the-immigration-rules-hc-997-1-july-2025/explanatory-memorandum-to-the-statement-of-changes-to-the-immigration-rules-hc-997-1-july-2025-accessible
2. Home Office, "Workers and Temporary Workers: sponsor a skilled worker", version 04/26, 8 April 2026 (SK4.31 in-country requirement; SK4.34 transitional provision ends 22 July 2028; SK4.40 to SK4.41 CQC registration condition; SK4.52 care worker recruitment requirement removed at this version). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sponsor-a-skilled-worker/workers-and-temporary-workers-sponsor-a-skilled-worker-accessible
3. Immigration Rules, Appendix Skilled Worker (SW 6.1B three-month prior employment condition; SW 6.1C carve-out for former SOC 2010 codes 6145 and 6146), last updated 3 August 2026. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-skilled-worker
4. GOV.UK, "Immigration Rules: statement of changes" collection (HC 1691, 5 March 2026; HC 259, 9 July 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-rules-statement-of-changes
5. Home Office, "Workers and Temporary Workers: guidance for sponsors, Part 3: sponsor duties and compliance", version 05/26, 20 May 2026 (C1.13 ten working day reporting events; C1.37 specified documents; C7.27 to C7.28 right to work checks on sponsored workers). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/workers-and-temporary-workers-guidance-for-sponsors-part-3-sponsor-duties-and-compliance/workers-and-temporary-workers-guidance-for-sponsors-part-3-sponsor-duties-and-compliance-accessible
6. Home Office, "Appendix D: record-keeping duties", version 08/26, 3 August 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keep-records-for-sponsorship-appendix-d/workers-and-temporary-workers-guidance-for-sponsors-appendix-d-record-keeping-duties-accessible
7. GOV.UK, "Employees: if your visa sponsor loses their licence" (60-day curtailment). https://www.gov.uk/employee-lose-sponsor-licence
8. DHSC, "Support offer to international ASC workers whose employer's sponsor licence has been revoked", last updated 12 May 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/support-offer-to-international-asc-workers-whose-employers-sponsor-licence-has-been-revoked/support-offer-to-international-asc-workers-whose-employers-sponsor-licence-has-been-revoked
9. Skills for Care, "The size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England: workforce supply and demand trends 2025/26", 24 June 2026. https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Adult-Social-Care-Workforce-Data/workforceintelligence/resources/Reports/National/The-size-and-structure-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England-2026.pdf
10. Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Schedule 3. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/schedule/3
11. Home Office, "Code of practice on preventing illegal working: Right to Work Scheme for employers, 13 February 2024" (per-worker civil penalty maxima in force from that date). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/illegal-working-penalties-codes-of-practice-for-employers/code-of-practice-on-preventing-illegal-working-right-to-work-scheme-for-employers-13-february-2024-accessible
12. Home Office, "Prevention of illegal working: Extending the Right to Work Scheme to other working arrangements: government response", 30 June 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/extending-the-right-to-work-scheme/outcome/prevention-of-illegal-working-extending-the-right-to-work-scheme-to-other-working-arrangements-government-response-accessible
13. Home Office, "Employer's guide to right to work checks", dated 16 July 2026, in force 1 October 2026. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a59ff43908b618a53702fc2/16_07_26_DRAFT_Employer_s_guide_to_right_to_work_checks__002_.pdf
14. DBS, "Regulated activity with adults in England and Wales", 23 April 2026 (source of the quoted once-only test). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-guidance-leaflets/regulated-activity-with-adults-in-england-and-wales
15. DBS, "DBS checks for adult social care roles", 23 April 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-guidance-leaflets/dbs-checks-for-adult-social-care-roles
16. GOV.UK, "DBS checks guidance for employers, voluntary organisations and third parties", last updated 1 July 2026 (check levels and fees, DBS Adult First supervised start). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/dbs-check-requests-guidance-for-employers
17. Home Office and DHSC, "Overseas recruitment for care workers to end", 11 May 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/overseas-recruitment-for-care-workers-to-end