Health and Care Worker visa
Doctors, nurses and allied health roles. Cheaper fees and no health surcharge, but care-worker recruitment from abroad has closed.
Rules and fees checked against gov.uk on 8 November 2026. Page updated 8 November 2026. How we check our guides.
- Who it is for
- Doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and other listed health roles with an NHS, NHS-supplier or adult social care sponsor
- Fee
- £304 (up to 3 years) or £590 (over 3 years)
- Health surcharge
- None
- Care workers
- Route closed to new applicants from overseas on 22 July 2025
The Health and Care Worker visa is a cheaper version of the Skilled Worker visa for people in a defined list of health and care occupations. It was created in August 2020 to make NHS recruitment easier and later widened to care workers, which drove it to over 140,000 grants a year by 2023. The 2024 and 2025 reforms have shrunk it back towards its original purpose.
Who still qualifies
You need a job offer in an eligible occupation code from an eligible sponsor. The eligible codes are the medical and health professions: doctors, nurses and midwives, paramedics, pharmacists, radiographers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dentists, speech and language therapists, medical laboratory staff, social workers and several other health and social care management roles. The sponsor must be the NHS, an organisation providing medical services to the NHS, or an adult social care provider registered with the relevant regulator (the CQC in England).
Two roles that drove most of the route's growth are now closed to new overseas recruitment: care workers (SOC 6135) and senior care workers (SOC 6136). From 22 July 2025 sponsors cannot assign a Certificate of Sponsorship in those codes to someone applying from outside the UK. People already in the UK on the route can still extend or switch sponsor until 22 July 2028, provided they have been working for the sponsor for at least three months before the certificate is assigned.
What makes it different from the Skilled Worker visa
- Lower fees. £304 for a visa of up to three years and £590 for longer, wherever you apply from. The ordinary Skilled Worker fee is up to £1,751.
- No Immigration Health Surcharge for you or your dependants. For a family of four on a five-year visa that is a saving of more than £20,000.
- Faster decisions. Applications are prioritised, and most from outside the UK are decided within three weeks.
- Same settlement rules as the Skilled Worker route: five years, the Life in the UK test, the English requirement and the 180-day absence limit.
Everything else, including the going rate for your occupation, the English requirement and the maintenance funds, follows the Skilled Worker rules. Health roles have their own going rates based on NHS pay bands, so the general salary threshold is usually not the binding figure.
Dependants
Partners and children can come with you and have the same rights as Skilled Worker dependants, with one exception: care workers and senior care workers sponsored on or after 11 March 2024 cannot sponsor dependants. Doctors, nurses and the other professional roles are unaffected.
Professional registration
Most roles on this route need registration with a UK regulator before you can work: the GMC for doctors, the NMC for nurses and midwives, the HCPC for the allied professions, Social Work England for social workers. Registration is a separate process with its own exams and fees and can take many months. Your sponsor will normally want it in hand, or at least underway with a confirmed start date, before assigning the Certificate of Sponsorship.