Mahmood climbs down on longer settlement wait for care workers already in the UK

Care workers who arrived before May 2025 stay on the five-year route

Foreign care workers already in the UK will not face the 10-year wait for settlement that was planned for most of them, or the 15 years planned for some. On 2 November 2026, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced revised plans (opens in a new tab) after a backlash from Labour MPs and unions.

Under the new plan, care workers who arrived before May 2025 and earn at least £25,000 a year stay on the five-year route. Others will be able to apply for a new five-year visa and then seek settlement.

This is a material change for providers that employ overseas staff. In our view, a worker who can see a five-year path to settling has a strong reason to stay in the job, and a worker facing 10 or 15 years had a reason to look elsewhere.

Certainty should help staff stay

In our view, the climbdown should help retention. Providers that rely on sponsored staff now have something firm to tell them about their future in the UK.

Providers and unions warned about the longer wait while it was on the table, as our September piece on the Homecare Association's call to protect care workers already here and our piece on MHA and UNISON's warning about agency bills set out.

Just over 500,000 people still face a longer wait

The climbdown is partial. Under the revised plan, just over 500,000 people already in the UK will still be delayed from gaining permanent residency (opens in a new tab), compared with almost 800,000 under the original proposal. The Home Office expects 1.9 million people to settle in the UK between 2026 and 2030.

Neither figure is broken down by sector or by nation, so how many care workers are among them, or where across the UK they work, is not known. A registered manager cannot read their own team from these numbers.

What a manager can check is the two tests: when each overseas worker arrived, and whether they earn at least £25,000 a year. Staff who miss either one face the new visa first.

The cost question is still open

The original plan was sold on money. The Home Office put the saving at £10bn, an estimate based on Migration Advisory Committee analysis (opens in a new tab) of the net lifetime cost of care workers and their adult dependants expected to settle between 2026 and 2030.

The revised plan has no total yet. Mahmood told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that detailed costs would come only when the Home Office puts the changes before Parliament. Home Office minister Anna Turley told BBC Breakfast it would save at least £1bn in welfare spending over the next couple of years, with further calculations still to come.

IPPR questioned the framing on cost. Its analysis found that skilled migrants, including health and care workers settling under current rules, would add £115bn to UK public finances (opens in a new tab).

Reassurance now, the rules later

Care England welcomed the U-turn as 'vital reassurance' for the sector (opens in a new tab), and said the government must now deliver on the commitments behind it.

That condition carries weight. Staff deciding whether to stay are being asked to trust rules that have not yet gone before Parliament.

The climbdown gives overseas care workers a reason to stay. Whether they still believe it by the time the rules are laid is the part the government has not yet secured.