Health and Care Worker Visa UK: Routes, Salary Thresholds, and 2026 Changes

Healthcare workers wanting to move to the UK face a route that has been significantly tightened over the past two years — and then, in April 2026, partially reopened in a very specific way. The headline change is an NHS Band 3 pay rise that now brings care assistant and healthcare support roles above the Health and Care visa threshold. But the rules around care workers specifically are more complicated than they first appear. If you are a nurse, care worker, or healthcare support worker from Ukraine already in the UK, here is what the landscape actually looks like in mid-2026.

What the Health and Care Worker Visa Is

The Health and Care visa is a variant of the Skilled Worker visa. It offers the same immigration permission but at a lower application cost, with the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) waived entirely — saving £1,035 per year per adult compared to a standard Skilled Worker visa.

Eligibility requires all three of the following:

• A job offer from an NHS trust, GP surgery, social care provider, or other eligible healthcare employer
• A role on the list of approved healthcare occupations (defined by SOC code)
• A salary meeting the Health and Care-specific thresholds, which are set lower than the standard Skilled Worker thresholds

The approved occupations include registered nurses (SOC 2231), nursing associates, occupational therapists, social workers, physiotherapists, paramedics, and — until recently the problem category — care workers and senior care workers (SOC 6135 and 6136).

The Band 3 Change: April 2026

The significant development in April 2026 is the NHS pay uplift bringing Band 3 salaries to £25,760 per year as the starting point on the Agenda for Change pay scale.

This matters because the Health and Care Worker visa threshold for care roles is approximately £23,200 for positions on the Immigration Salary List. Under the old Band 3 rate (£22,816 starting point), many Band 3 healthcare support roles sat perilously close to — or below — the threshold. The April 2026 uplift pushes all Band 3 starters safely above it.

For registered nurses and qualified healthcare professionals, Band 5 starts at approximately £27,000 (after the same April 2026 uplift), which comfortably exceeds the nursing threshold.

In practical terms: if you are applying for a Band 3 role in the NHS — healthcare assistant, clinical support worker, phlebotomist — the salary now clears the visa threshold without the employer needing to offer above-scale pay.

Care Workers and the Dependant Bar

Here the picture gets more complicated. Care workers (SOC 6135) remain on the Immigration Salary List, which means they qualify for the lower Health and Care visa threshold rather than the full Skilled Worker £41,700 threshold. But there is a significant restriction attached.

Since mid-2025, overseas recruitment for new care workers has been heavily restricted. A care employer cannot sponsor a care worker who is applying from outside the UK unless they can demonstrate they have exhausted domestic recruitment — and in practice, the Home Office has been approving very few new international care worker sponsorships.

Additionally — and this is crucial for families — care workers on the Health and Care visa are barred from bringing dependants (spouses or children) to the UK, unless they were already in the UK as a dependant before February 2024 under transitional protections.

So a Ukrainian woman currently in the UK on a Homes for Ukraine visa, wanting to work as a care worker: she can switch to the Health and Care visa based on a care role, but if her husband or children are not already in the UK, they cannot join her on that visa. For families separated by the conflict, this is a significant constraint.

The ISL listing for care workers runs until July 22, 2028, at which point the Home Office will review whether it continues. The current policy intent is for the sector to recruit domestically rather than internationally.

Care Worker Route vs. Healthcare Professional Route: Which Applies to You

If you are a registered nurse, allied health professional, or other qualified clinician, none of the above restrictions apply to you. The dependant bar and new-entry restrictions apply specifically to care assistant and senior care worker roles (SOC 6135/6136), not to regulated healthcare professionals.

For Ukrainians with nursing or clinical qualifications, the Health and Care visa route is open, the IHS is waived, and dependants can come. The bottleneck for nurses is the NMC registration process, not the visa itself.

IHS Exemption: What It Saves You

On a standard Skilled Worker visa, you pay the Immigration Health Surcharge before you even apply — £1,035 per adult per year, upfront for the full visa duration. For a three-year Skilled Worker visa, that is £3,105 per adult, paid before the application is even decided.

The Health and Care Worker visa exempts you from the IHS entirely. For a single applicant on a three-year visa, that is £3,105 saved. For a couple with two children on a three-year visa, the saving is approximately £10,725.

This is not a minor administrative detail — it is the largest single financial difference between the two visa categories for the same job and salary.

Visa Application Fees

The Health and Care Worker visa also has lower application fees than the standard Skilled Worker visa. In 2026 the application fee for a Health and Care Worker visa is:

• £298 for up to three years (from outside UK)
• £551 for over three years

Compared to the standard Skilled Worker fee of £827/£1,636, this is roughly a third of the cost. The combination of lower fees and IHS waiver means the Health and Care visa is substantially cheaper overall, which matters when you are also paying for NMC registration, IELTS testing, and potentially UK ENIC qualification recognition.

NHS Employer Sponsorship: What to Look For

Not all healthcare employers hold a sponsor licence. Private care homes and smaller community care providers are less likely to be on the Home Office register than NHS trusts. Before you sign a job offer, verify the employer is on the register of licensed sponsors — GOV.UK publishes a searchable CSV of all active sponsors.

NHS trusts are overwhelmingly listed. For private sector roles in homecare or residential care, check first. If the employer is not on the register, they need to apply for a licence before they can issue a CoS, which typically takes eight weeks on a standard application.

For Ukrainian healthcare professionals navigating this from inside the UK — currently on a Ukraine scheme and weighing the switch to a Health and Care visa — the timing question is straightforward: every month on a humanitarian visa is a month not counting toward ILR. The Ukraine to UK Visa Pathway Guide maps out the full transition strategy, including how healthcare professional routes interact with the five-year settlement clock and what the proposed Earned Settlement model means for NHS workers specifically.