Vulnerable people in parts of the country could be left to “deteriorate” at home with “no care” due to the Government’s visa clampdown, insiders warn, as The i Paper‘s analysis finds high proportions of overseas frontline care workers concentrated in the South.
Since Sir Keir Starmer’s Government stopped issuing the health and care worker visa in July 2025, international recruitment to the sector has dropped by tens of thousands, and numbers are expected to fall further as new rules on migrant settlement come into force.
Andy Burnham’s Government this month exempted care workers from Labour’s plan to make migrants wait 15 years for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), allowing those who arrived before May 2025 to qualify after five years if they earn over £25,000 and meet visa requirements.
But care workers warned that many workers are employed by non-compliant sponsors – which can fail to pay salaries that meet the £25,000 threshold – and could leave the workforce altogether if they face a further five-year wait to qualify for settlement.
“What the Government is doing to migrants [is going to affect] continuity of care and it’s going to affect the quality of care,” Amaka Molokwu, a former care worker who left the UK to return to Nigeria, told The i Paper. Molokwu left the UK over difficulties securing an employer that would have helped her meet the required wage threshold to secure ILR.
London and the South-East most affected
The highest proportion of non-British frontline care staff are in London and South-East England, the analysis found, meaning local authorities there could face the most significant effects of the decline in international care workers coming to the UK.
Barking and Dagenham, one of England’s most deprived boroughs, had the highest proportion (84 per cent) of non-British workers in direct care roles in 2025/26 – double the national level, the analysis of Skills for Care data shows.
Non-British workers made up 77 per cent of the local authority and independent social care workforce in Harrow, and 76 per cent in Ealing, Enfield and Newham.
These figures include people on existing health and care worker visas, people arriving in the UK via other legal routes and people with a non-EU nationality who did not arrive in the UK recently.
‘People end up being blue-lighted to A&E’
London recruited the most international workers to direct roles within the independent sector, which is where most care workers are employed. Outside of the capital, Slough, which ranks seventh overall, has the highest proportion of non-EU and EU workers in its direct care workforce (72 per cent).
Dr Jane Townson, CEO of Homecare Association, which represents over 2,100 organisations across Britain, warned that the sector’s reduced capacity as more foreign workers leave could result in “no care” for some vulnerable people across the country.
“The combination of things that the Government hasn’t really thought through properly could leave us without enough capacity in some places to meet need and then what happens is that people deteriorate at home and they end up being blue-lighted to A&E.”
Local authorities that responded to requests for comment, including Ealing, Barking and Dagenham, and West Northamptonshire, recognised the “valuable contribution” of international care workers and said they are looking into what the policy changes could mean for their local care sector.
‘Really difficult to recruit local staff’
The largest proportion of British workers in care roles are seen in the North, for reasons including lower median pay and fewer well-paid alternative opportunities. But even there, some providers are heavily reliant on international recruits.
Stella Shaw, owner of StellarCare, which provides domiciliary care services to private clients and works with local authorities and the NHS in Cheshire, said around 40 of her 50 employees are migrant workers.
“It’s been really difficult to recruit local staff,” she said.
The number of roles filled by British workers has fallen by over 130,000 since 2020-21 – including a 40,000 drop in the last year alone, according to Skills for Care. Britons were also more likely to leave the sector, with a turnover rate of 38.2 per cent compared with 21.6 per cent of international workers in 2025-26.
Visa sponsorship has enabled Shaw to build a stable workforce, but across the country, the number of international care workers has fallen by 50,000 since the closure of the health and care worker visa in July 2025.
International workers already in the UK on other visas have until 2028 to switch to a health and care visa, but after that, employers can no longer sponsor new recruits under this pathway as the roles will be removed from the temporary shortage list.
“I don’t know how companies like myself are going to provide care to an ageing population without investment in staff,” Shaw said.
Shaw said her company has been unable to continue caring for local authority clients, due to the limitations of what she called “outdated” funding and staffing infrastructure.
Care leaders also worry that low pay and poor working conditions in the sector could also drive workers to leave once they secure ILR after five years.
“It’s possible that the first batch of care workers who came over in 2022 will soon be able to get earned settlement, and that means that they’ll be able to work in any sector doing anything. And so, they may well skip off to better-paid jobs elsewhere,” Townson said.
Shaw worries about the future of care services as more foreign workers leave the sector and the population gets older. “I do have a concern about how I’m going to replace [foreign workers],” she said. “It’s very, very worrying [with] future demand, how we can address it, and how we can meet it.”
The Government was approached for comment.
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