Unpaid Travel Time Between Care Visits Could Cost You Your Sponsor Licence

Key Takeaways

• Travel time between care visits counts as working time and must be paid at or above the National Minimum Wage.
• Only the journey from home to the first call, and from the last call back home, is excluded.
• Unpaid or unrecorded travel time can pull a worker's effective hourly rate below the legal minimum, creating an immediate compliance breach.
• Underpaying travel time is a recognised reason for care sponsor licences being suspended or revoked.
• Clear contracts and itemised payslips that separate care hours from travel time protect both your workers and your licence.
• A free HR compliance audit is the simplest way to check whether your pay structure puts your licence at risk.

Introduction

If you are a UK care provider sponsoring overseas workers, the way you pay for travel time could quietly be putting your sponsor licence at risk. Many domiciliary and home care employers treat the time staff spend driving between clients' homes as unpaid downtime. It is not. Under UK employment law, travel between care calls is working time, and it must be paid.

This matters even more for sponsored workers. When travel time goes unpaid or unrecorded, it can easily push an employee's effective hourly wage below the National Minimum Wage. For a sponsor, that is not just a payroll mistake. It is a compliance breach that can trigger licence suspension, revocation, and a complete halt to your international recruitment.

In this guide we explain exactly what counts as working time, how the National Minimum Wage applies to travel between visits, why the Home Office treats this so seriously, and the practical steps you can take to keep your licence protected.

Why Travel Time Between Care Visits Is Working Time

For National Minimum Wage purposes, time spent travelling in connection with work during the working day counts as working time. For home care staff who move from one client to the next throughout their shift, those journeys between calls are a core part of the job, not personal time. UK government guidance on the minimum wage for different types of work confirms that travelling between assignments during a shift is included when calculating pay.

The only journeys excluded are the commute from home to the first appointment of the day, and the journey from the last appointment back home. Everything in between, the driving, waiting, and travelling from client to client, is time the worker is required to be available and working.

What counts and what does not

How Unpaid Travel Time Breaches the National Minimum Wage

The National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage are calculated across all working time, not just the hours spent face to face with clients. If you divide a worker's total pay by their total working hours (including eligible travel) and the result falls below the legal rate, you have underpaid them, even if the per visit rate looked generous on paper. You can read the official method on the calculating the minimum wage guidance.

From 1 April 2026, the National Living Wage is £12.71 per hour for workers aged 21 and over. The table below shows the current rates.

A simple worked example

Imagine a care worker is paid £14 an hour, but only for time spent with clients. In one day they complete 6 hours of visits and spend 1.5 hours travelling between clients, so they are paid £84. On paper the rate looks comfortably above the minimum, but they actually worked 7.5 hours, and £84 divided by 7.5 is £11.20 an hour. That is below the National Living Wage of £12.71. The check is made across the whole pay reference period rather than day by day, but the arithmetic works the same way.

Why This Puts Your Sponsor Licence at Risk

As a licensed sponsor you are legally responsible for paying sponsored workers correctly and keeping accurate records. Paying below the National Minimum Wage is a breach of both employment law and your sponsor duties. Compliance with the National Minimum Wage Act is part of the definition of an eligible role, which every sponsored job must meet for as long as you sponsor the worker, as our guidance on Sponsor Licence: How to Apply explains. In the health and social care sector, underpayment linked to unpaid travel time has become one of the most common triggers for sponsor licence suspension and revocation.

The risk is often uncovered during a Home Office compliance visit. A single comment from a worker during an interview, such as mentioning that they are not paid for driving between clients, can prompt a detailed review of contracts, payslips, and pay calculations. If that review shows effective pay below the minimum wage, the consequences escalate quickly.

What is at stake

• Suspension of your sponsor licence while the Home Office investigates.
• Revocation of the licence, ending your ability to sponsor overseas workers.
• Cancellation of your sponsored workers' permission, although under a temporary Home Office arrangement, care workers and senior care workers keep their permission where the revocation is the only reason.
• Arrears, penalties, and reputational damage from minimum wage enforcement.

For a care business that depends on international recruitment, losing the licence can mean losing a significant part of the workforce almost overnight. This matters more in care than in most sectors. Since 22 July 2025, care workers and senior care workers (occupation codes 6135 and 6136) cannot be sponsored from outside the UK, so a provider can only recruit sponsored care staff who are already here, and only while it holds a licence.

A Real Example: Suspension and Reinstatement

A domiciliary care provider sponsoring overseas staff went through a Home Office compliance visit. During the visit it emerged that care workers were not being paid for travel time between calls. Because this pulled their effective pay below the National Minimum Wage, the provider's sponsor licence was suspended.

WPC Lawyers Limited stepped in to help. By updating the employment contracts and introducing clear, itemised payslips that explicitly separated care hours from paid travel time, the provider was able to demonstrate full compliance. The sponsor licence was reinstated, and international recruitment continued. The lesson is simple: the problem is fixable, but it is far cheaper and far less stressful to fix it before a compliance visit rather than after a suspension letter.

How to Stay Compliant on Travel Time

Protecting your licence comes down to recording working time accurately and paying for all of it. The checklist below covers the essentials.

If you sponsor workers on the Health and Care Worker visa, these checks are especially important, because pay and working conditions for sponsored roles are scrutinised closely. For more guidance on staying compliant, review our other WorkPermitCloud blogs.

How Can WorkPermitCloud Help?

WorkPermitCloud helps UK care providers get their pay structure right and keep their sponsor licence protected. Our team can review your contracts, payslips, and travel time policies, identify any National Minimum Wage risk, and put compliant systems in place. Start with our free Get Free HR Compliance Audit tool, explore our compliant HR software, or take our UKVI Compliant HR Software service for ongoing peace of mind. If you think you may be at risk, get in touch and we will help you fix it before it becomes a problem.

Conclusion

Unpaid travel time between care visits is an easy mistake to make and a costly one to ignore. Because minimum wage law treats travel between calls as working time, failing to pay it can quietly push wages below the legal minimum and put your entire sponsor licence at risk. The good news is that this is entirely avoidable. Clear contracts, itemised payslips, accurate time records, and regular pay reviews keep you on the right side of the law and protect your ability to recruit the workers your service depends on.

Do not wait for a suspension letter to act. Review your pay structure today, and if you are unsure, speak to a specialist who can check it for you.

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