Sponsor Licence Revoked: What Care Workers in the UK Can Do Next

Key Takeaways

• If your care employer's sponsor licence is revoked, your Certificate of Sponsorship becomes invalid and UKVI will normally write to you directly to confirm this.
• Under a temporary arrangement that is subject to review, the Home Office does not cancel a care worker's or senior care worker's permission where the sponsor's revocation is the only reason. Your permission still depends on your sponsor, so start looking for a new one straight away.
• The Department of Health and Social Care runs a free regional support offer for affected care workers in England, covering job matching, advice and wellbeing support.
• Licence applications and Certificates of Sponsorship can be expedited free of charge when a provider recruits a worker displaced by a revocation.
• Rematching success rates have been low, so you should also job hunt directly and check every prospective employer against the Register of Licensed Sponsors.
• You must never be charged a fee for a job, and sponsors cannot pass on the Immigration Skills Charge or their own licence costs to you.
• Unpaid wages remain a contractual debt. Revocation is a matter between the Home Office and your employer and does not cancel your employment rights.
• If you cannot find a new sponsor in time, alternative routes such as partner, parent, private life or protection claims may be available.
• Always make a valid application before your current permission expires so that you do not become an overstayer.
• WorkPermitCloud helps displaced care workers review their options, secure a new sponsor and submit a change of employment application in time, and you can search verified sponsored vacancies on WPC Jobs.

Introduction

International care workers hold the UK's adult social care system together. Yet thousands of them now find their immigration status hanging on a decision made about their employer rather than about them. When the Home Office revokes a care provider's sponsor licence, every sponsored worker at that organisation is caught in the fallout, often with very little warning and even less clarity about what happens next.

Compliance action against sponsors has reached record levels. According to the Home Office migration transparency data, 1,712 sponsor licences were suspended and 1,545 were revoked in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Adult social care providers have taken the heaviest hit of any sector. Behind each of those numbers sits a group of care workers who did nothing wrong and who suddenly need to find a new sponsor, protect their income and keep their family's immigration status intact.

This guide sets out, in plain English, exactly what happens when a care employer loses its licence, what free government support you can access, how to find a new sponsor quickly, what your employment rights are, and what your options look like if sponsorship simply cannot be found in time. If you want the general Skilled Worker position, you may also find our blog on what happens during the 60-day curtailment period helpful. For the rules on changing sponsor as a care worker, see our guidance on Care Worker and Health Routes.

What Actually Happens When a Sponsor Licence Is Revoked?

Revocation is the most serious sanction the Home Office can impose on a sponsor. It is permanent, there is no right of appeal, and the employer is removed from the public register of licensed sponsors immediately. The employer is also barred from applying for a fresh licence for at least 12 months, and often longer where civil penalties or criminal matters are involved.

For sponsored care workers, this is what follows:

• Your Certificate of Sponsorship is cancelled and is no longer valid for any future application.
• UKVI will normally email you to confirm that your sponsor has been removed from the register.
• Under a temporary Home Office arrangement, which is subject to regular review, your permission is not cancelled where the only reason would be the revocation. If there is any other reason, for example if you were involved in the reasons for revocation, the usual rules apply and your permission can be cut to 60 days or ended immediately.
• The arrangement does not mention dependants. The Rules allow a dependant's permission to be cancelled where the main worker's permission is cancelled, so while yours stands that ground does not arise. The guidance does not otherwise address dependants.

Published Home Office guidance does not spell out whether you can keep working for the employer after a revocation. In practice, there are situations where affected health and care workers continue in their role until their permission is cancelled or expires, whichever comes first. Revocation can, however, affect your ability to do supplementary employment. Because the position is not clear cut, you should take individual immigration advice before making any decision about continuing to work.

Suspension is not the same as revocation

If your employer's licence has only been suspended, your position is different. During a suspension the employer cannot assign new Certificates of Sponsorship, but existing sponsored workers can usually carry on working normally while the Home Office investigates. Our guidance on sponsor licence suspension versus revocation explains the distinction in more detail, and you can confirm your employer's current status yourself using our free sponsor licence status check.

What changes at each stage

Free Government Support for Care Workers in England

In recognition of how many care workers have been displaced, the Department of Health and Social Care publishes a dedicated support offer for international adult social care workers whose employer's sponsor licence has been revoked. The scheme is funded through the international recruitment regional fund and is delivered by regional partnerships across England.

The support available can include:

• Advice and guidance so that you understand your visa status and your employment rights
• Employment support, including help finding a new employer who can sponsor your visa
• Help accessing financial support if you are struggling because of job loss or unpaid wages
• Mental health and wellbeing support, such as buddying schemes and access to counselling

Support is aimed at care workers and senior care workers in England on the Health and Care Worker visa. Workers affected by a revocation are given priority. Adult social care is a devolved matter, so if you live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland you will need to check what the relevant devolved administration offers instead.

How to access the support

You need to email the regional partnership covering the area where you live. Your email should include your full name, the address where you are currently living, your contact details and the name of the provider that was sponsoring your visa. Giving complete information first time avoids delays.

Regional partnership contacts for displaced care workers in England

Note: contact details are taken from the DHSC guidance current at the time of writing. Always check the live GOV.UK page before you email, as regional arrangements are updated from time to time.

Finding a New Sponsor: The Real Challenge

Almost every displaced care worker asks the same question first. Where do I find another employer who can sponsor me? The regional partnerships exist partly to match workers with new providers, and the DHSC guidance confirms that applications for licences and Certificates of Sponsorship can be expedited free of charge where a provider is employing a worker displaced by a revocation. That commitment is genuinely valuable, because timing is usually the biggest obstacle.

The typical bottleneck is not finding a job offer. It is being able to submit a valid application in time. Many workers secure an offer from a licensed sponsor only to discover that the employer has no Certificates of Sponsorship left in its annual allocation. The employer then has to request an increase, and a standard request can take up to 12 weeks. A priority request can be far quicker, but these must be submitted at 7am and only a limited number are accepted each day, so they are difficult to secure.

How well does the rematching scheme actually work?

It is worth being realistic. Analysis published by the Work Rights Centre in June 2025, based on freedom of information data, found that the Home Office had emailed 28,621 displaced migrant care workers between May 2024 and May 2025. By the end of April 2025, only 941 of those workers, around 3.4 per cent of those signposted for support, had been recorded as finding employment with a legitimate sponsor. The East of England partnership alone received over 3,100 enquiries in a ten-month period and supported 82 people into new employment.

That does not mean you should ignore the scheme. It does mean you should treat it as one strand of your search rather than your whole strategy.

A practical search strategy

• Register with your regional partnership straight away and keep a record of the date you contacted them
• Apply directly through job boards, care provider websites and specialist sponsored job platforms
• Check every prospective employer against the Register of Licensed Sponsors before you accept an offer
• Ask, at interview stage, whether the employer has Certificates of Sponsorship available now and whether they will use the free expedited route for displaced workers
• Keep applying while any application is pending. Nothing is secure until a decision is made

Before accepting any offer, verify the employer on the official Register of Licensed Sponsors. An employer that is not on that list cannot sponsor you, whatever they tell you. You can also search verified sponsored vacancies on our jobs platform at WPC Jobs, where employers are checked against the Home Office register before their roles are listed.

Protecting Yourself from Scams and Illegal Fees

Displaced care workers are, unfortunately, an obvious target for exploitation. Some have already left poor working conditions, many have families depending on them, and all are under time pressure. That combination attracts unscrupulous recruiters and employers who demand payment in exchange for a job or a Certificate of Sponsorship.

The rules are clear. You should never be charged a fee by a recruiter or a prospective employer in exchange for a job. If you are being recruited through an agency, you can check whether it appears on the NHS Employers ethical recruiters list, and all international recruitment in health and social care should follow the government's code of practice.

Costs you can and cannot be asked to pay

If you believe you have been the victim of unethical or illegal working practices, you can report it to the Fair Work Agency (formerly the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority) on 0800 432 0804, or report abuse of the immigration system through the report an immigration crime service, which can be done anonymously. GOV.UK also publishes guidance on spotting scams when applying for health and social care jobs in the UK. Employers recruiting internationally are expected to follow the code of practice for international recruitment of health and social care personnel.

Financial Hardship and the No Recourse to Public Funds Condition

Health and Care Worker visas are granted subject to a no recourse to public funds condition. That means you cannot claim most welfare benefits or housing assistance. For a displaced worker with no income, waiting weeks for a Certificate of Sponsorship allocation and then more weeks for a visa decision, that restriction can quickly become unmanageable.

There is a route worth exploring. The Home Office has recognised that it holds discretion to lift the no recourse to public funds condition, including for workers, through a free change of conditions application. Applicants generally need to show that they are destitute or at imminent risk of destitution, that there are child welfare reasons requiring access to public funds, or that they face exceptional circumstances affecting their income or expenditure. These applications are not straightforward and they carry risks, so specialist advice is strongly recommended before you apply.

In the meantime, your regional partnership can point you towards local hardship funds, food support and crisis assistance, which are not classed as public funds and are therefore not affected by the condition.

Your Employment Rights Still Apply

This is the point that most displaced care workers underestimate. A sponsor licence revocation is an immigration matter between the Home Office and your employer. It does not wipe out your employer's contractual and statutory obligations to you for work you have already done.

Wages for hours you have already worked are a contractual debt owed to you. Statutory protections continue to apply in full, including the National Minimum Wage, protection from unlawful deductions from wages, and protection from unfair dismissal where you have the necessary qualifying service. Unpaid wages are the single most common complaint from care workers whose sponsor has lost its licence.

Issues worth checking carefully include:

• Whether you have been paid at or above the National Minimum Wage for all hours worked, including any time that should have counted as working time
• Whether deductions have been taken from your pay for sponsorship or recruitment costs that your employer was never permitted to recoup
• Whether a repayment clause in your contract is enforceable, particularly where it seeks to recover immigration costs
• Whether you are owed holiday pay, notice pay or any outstanding statutory payment

Acas offers free, confidential advice on any work-related problem on 0300 123 1100, and Citizens Advice can also help. Where a claim looks likely, a specialist employment solicitor can advise you on bringing a case in the Employment Tribunal. Employment Tribunal time limits are short, usually three months less one day, so raise concerns as early as you can.

What If You Cannot Find a New Sponsor in Time?

If sponsorship is not going to come together before your permission runs out, you must either make a different application or leave the UK before your current permission expires. Doing nothing turns you into an overstayer, which damages your immigration record and can affect future applications for years.

Depending on your circumstances, alternative routes may be open to you:

• Partner route, if you are the spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner of a British citizen or a person settled in the UK
• Parent route, if you have a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with a qualifying child in the UK
• Private life route, based on the length of your residence and your ties to the UK
• A protection claim, if you cannot return to your home country because of a fear of persecution or a real risk of serious harm
• Sponsorship in a different occupation, if you qualify for another eligible Skilled Worker role and can meet the salary and skill requirements

It is also important to understand the wider picture. The care worker and senior care worker routes closed to new applicants from overseas on 22 July 2025. If you already hold Skilled Worker permission as a care worker or senior care worker, a new sponsor can sponsor you in the same occupation codes with no end date and no requirement to have worked for them first. The 22 July 2028 deadline, and the requirement to have worked for the new sponsor in a care role for three months, apply only to people switching into care work from another immigration status.

Take advice from a regulated immigration adviser as early as possible so that you know which options are realistic before your deadline arrives, rather than after.

Your Step-by-Step Action Plan

What to do and when

Keep written records of everything. Emails to your regional partnership, job applications, correspondence with your former employer and copies of your payslips will all matter if you later need to evidence your efforts or bring an employment claim.

How Can WorkPermitCloud Help?

WorkPermitCloud is a regulated UK immigration and HR-tech firm, and we work with care workers and care providers on both sides of a revocation every week. For workers, we advise on your position after a revocation, review whether you can lawfully keep working, prepare your change of employment application, and explore alternative routes if sponsorship cannot be secured in time. You can also search verified sponsored vacancies through WPC Jobs. For providers, our sponsor licence revocation and compliance team helps you respond to suspension letters, protect your licence and recruit displaced workers through the free expedited route. Get in touch for a clear assessment of where you stand.

Conclusion

Losing your sponsor through no fault of your own is frightening, but it is not the end of your career in UK care. The workers who come through this successfully are almost always the ones who move quickly, verify everything, and refuse to rely on a single route to a solution. Contact your regional partnership, apply directly to employers you have checked on the official register, keep your pay records safe, and get regulated advice early rather than in the final fortnight.

The rules around care sector sponsorship are tightening, and the arrangement not to cancel care workers' permission is temporary. If your employer's licence has been revoked, or if you have heard that it is under investigation, the most useful thing you can do today is find out precisely where you stand. WorkPermitCloud is here to help you do exactly that.

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