UK Immigration Changes April 2026: What Employers Need to Do Now
A practical guide to the pay period rules, fee increases, and route changes now in effect, and what your business needs to do about them
April is always a busy month for UK immigration changes, and 2026 is no exception. A batch of updates came into effect on 8 April, touching everything from how sponsored worker salaries are checked, to visa fees, to who qualifies for certain Global Business Mobility routes.
If you hold a sponsor licence, recruit internationally, or support employees through the UK visa system, here is what has changed and what you need to do about it.
Salary Compliance Is Now Checked Per Pay Period, Not Just Annually
This is the change that will affect the most employers day to day.
Until now, salary compliance for Skilled Worker visa holders was assessed mainly against the annual salary recorded on the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), the employment contract and pay via BACS. In practice, that meant month-to-month fluctuations were tolerated as long as the annual total added up.
Since 8 April 2026, the Home Office has been assessing salary compliance across defined pay periods. That means payslips, payroll reports, and working hours records can all be examined during a compliance visit, remotely via HMRC records, or when a visa application is being processed, to check whether the required salary was actually paid in each period, not just over the year as a whole.
What Does This Mean in Practice?
If you pay sponsored workers monthly, the salary paid across any three-month period must be at least one quarter of the required annual salary. If you pay more frequently than monthly (fortnightly or weekly), the salary across any twelve-week period must be at least 12/52 of the annual figure.
Where a sponsored worker has irregular hours or a variable working pattern, a 17-week averaging window can apply, but only if the arrangement is clearly documented in the employment contract and you keep payroll records over rolling 17-week periods.
A single month of lower pay will not automatically trigger a breach, provided the averaging window is met. But if the salary during the relevant period falls short and cannot be justified under the averaging rules, the Home Office may treat it as non-compliance.
Does This Apply to Workers Already Sponsored?
There are transitional provisions. If a Certificate of Sponsorship was assigned before 8 April 2026, the application will generally be decided under the previous rules. But that does not mean you can park this for existing workers. Compliance visits and remote checks with HMRC records will increasingly look at payroll through the lens of the new rules, regardless of when the CoS was issued.
Most employers are better off aligning all sponsored workers to the new framework now rather than trying to manage two systems.
What You Should Do
Check your payroll arrangements for every sponsored worker. Can you demonstrate that the salary paid in each pay period, not just the annual total, meets the required threshold? If your payroll system was built for HMRC reporting rather than immigration compliance, it may not produce the data the Home Office expects. Now is the time to close that gap.
Make sure payroll cycles match the information on the CoS and the employment contract. If working hours vary, document the pattern properly and keep records that support the relevant averaging window.
Fee Increases Across Almost Every Application Type
From 8 April 2026, the Home Office increased most immigration and nationality fees by six to seven per cent. The increases apply to any application submitted on or after 8 April, regardless of when the decision is made.
The Headline Numbers for Sponsors
- Large sponsor licence applications have risen from £1,579 to £1,682. Small sponsor licence applications have risen from £574 to £611. Priority processing for licence applications remains at £750.
- Skilled Worker visa fees for applications from outside the UK have risen from £769 to £819 (up to three years) and from £1,519 to £1,618 (over three years). In-country extensions have increased proportionally.
- Indefinite Leave to Remain has risen from £3,029 to £3,226 per applicant, a £197 increase per person. For a family of four applying together, the Home Office fee alone now exceeds £12,900.
- The ETA fee has gone from £16 to £20, a 25 per cent increase on a scheme that only launched in late 2023.
What Has Not Changed
The Certificate of Sponsorship fee stays at £525 for Skilled Worker roles and £55 for Temporary Worker routes. The Immigration Health Surcharge remains at £1,035 per year. The Immigration Skills Charge, which rose in December 2025, is also unchanged this time around.
Why This Matters for Budgeting
Individually, these are incremental increases. But they sit on top of the CoS fee increase in April 2025, the ISC rise in December 2025, and the salary threshold changes from April 2024. The total government fee bill for sponsoring a single Skilled Worker over five years now exceeds £13,000 for a large employer, before legal costs. If you are recruiting multiple international workers each year, these cumulative increases should be part of your workforce planning conversations.
Global Business Mobility: More Flexibility for Secondments and India Trade
Two changes to the Global Business Mobility routes took effect in late March and early April 2026.
Secondment Worker Route: Six Months Instead of Twelve
The overseas employment requirement for the Secondment Worker route has been halved, from 12 months to six months. Employees of overseas businesses can now qualify after six months of overseas employment, provided the other requirements are met, including the £50 million contract or investment threshold.
If your business uses the Secondment Worker route as part of international service contracts, this widens the pool of employees who can be deployed to the UK on shorter notice.
Service Supplier Route: Indian Nationals Now Eligible
From 26 March 2026, Indian nationals became eligible for the Service Supplier route under the UK-India Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. This allows overseas service providers from India to send workers to the UK temporarily where a contract exists between an Indian supplier and a UK business.
For businesses with service agreements involving Indian partners or suppliers, this opens a new route for bringing personnel to the UK that was not previously available.
A Reminder on Settlement
The GBM routes do not lead to settlement. Time spent on a GBM visa does not count towards the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain. Switching from a GBM route to a Skilled Worker visa is possible in certain circumstances, and that is where getting the right advice early makes a real difference.
The Visa Brake: Restrictions on Certain Nationalities
From 26 March 2026, Skilled Worker visa applications from Afghan nationals and Student visa applications from nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan made from outside the UK are being refused, even where a CoS or CAS has already been issued. Applications from within the UK are not affected.
If you have affected candidates in your recruitment pipeline, you will need to review your options. The government has said the visa brake will be kept under review, but there is no confirmed end date.
Updated Sponsor Guidance: Read It, Know It, Evidence It
Alongside the rule changes, the Home Office published significantly updated sponsor guidance in March and April 2026. They introduce new obligations that every licence holder must comply with.
You Must Read All the Guidance and Be Able to Prove It
The updated guidance now explicitly states that sponsors are required to read the sponsor guidance in full. That means Part 1 (applying for a licence), Part 2 (sponsoring a worker), Part 3 (duties and compliance), all relevant appendices, the route-specific guidance for any routes on your licence, and the glossary. These documents run to several hundred pages combined.
More importantly, this is not a box-ticking exercise. The Home Office expects Authorising Officers to know their way around the guidance and to be able to demonstrate that knowledge during a compliance visit. That expectation should be cascaded to all Key Personnel: your Key Contact, Level 1 and Level 2 Users. The Home Office expects knowledge-sharing to be frequent and documented.
In practical terms, if a compliance officer visits your premises and your Authorising Officer cannot show familiarity with the current guidance, or cannot point to evidence that they and their team have read and understood the latest updates, that is a compliance problem. Consider keeping a log of when guidance was reviewed, by whom, and what changes were noted.
You Must Tell Sponsored Workers About Their Employment Rights
The guidance now places a specific duty on sponsors to ensure that all sponsored workers understand their UK employment rights. This is not limited to new starters; it applies to everyone you currently sponsor as well.
The new requirement is that workers' rights should be clearly communicated, whether through the employment contract, a standalone summary document, or a signed acknowledgement that the worker has been directed to the relevant information. A business that cannot demonstrate how it has informed its sponsored workers of their rights is unlikely to be considered compliant. You should also record how and when the information was shared.
Right to Work Checks: Broader Scope
The guidance has also expanded the scope of right to work checks. Previously, the focus was on workers you directly employ. The updated guidance now suggests sponsors must conduct right to work checks on any worker they wish to employ or directly engage, and that includes self-employed contractors and secondees, not just employees on your payroll.
The Home Office has also made clear that if you are employing or engaging a worker who does not have the right to work in the UK, your licence will normally be revoked. For most employers, this means reviewing whether your current right to work checking processes extend to all categories of worker you engage, not just those on a contract of employment.
What You Should Do
Read the guidance. Not a summary, the actual documents. Assign this to your Authorising Officer and Key Personnel as a priority and keep a record of when it was done. Set up a process for reviewing updates as they are published. The Home Office updates the guidance frequently and sometimes at short notice.
Review how you communicate employment rights to sponsored workers and make sure you can evidence it. If you have not already done so, issue a written summary or ensure the information is clearly covered in your contracts and onboarding materials.
Extend your right to work checking processes to cover all workers you engage, including self-employed contractors and secondees. Document everything.
Digital Immigration: Share Codes and Right to Work Checks
Two developments are now fully in place. Since 25 February 2026, most UK entry visas are issued as eVisas rather than paper vignettes in passports. Visa holders need a UKVI account to view and share their immigration status, including generating share codes for right to work checks.
The ETA scheme is also now fully enforced. Anyone travelling to the UK who does not hold a UK visa or residence status, and is not a British or Irish citizen, must have an ETA before travel.
For HR teams, the practical takeaway is that right to work checks now rely on online share codes as the default (except for British and Irish citizens). If your process still involves asking for physical documents as the primary evidence, it is time to update your procedures and train your team on the online system.
What Is Coming Next: Earned Settlement and Higher English Requirements
The earned settlement reforms have not been implemented yet, but they remain firmly on the government's agenda. The consultation closed in February 2026 and proposed extending the qualifying period for ILR from five years to ten years for most sponsored work routes, with a points-based system that could adjust the timeline based on individual circumstances.
The current ten-year long residence route is expected to be abolished as part of the same package.
A confirmed change arriving in March 2027 is a higher English language requirement for settlement, B2 level in speaking and listening, up from the current B1 standard. If you have employees who may be affected, it is worth considering what language training support you can offer now rather than leaving it until the deadline approaches.
The precise implementation date and transitional arrangements for earned settlement are still to be confirmed. But, if the proposals are implemented in full, the route to permanent residence in the UK will get longer and more expensive for most. For employers who use immigration as part of their talent strategy, this has real implications for retention and workforce planning.
A Quick Checklist for Employers
Payroll: Audit salary arrangements for every sponsored worker against the new pay period rules. Can you demonstrate compliance per pay period, not just annually?
Sponsor guidance: Assign your Authorising Officer and Key Personnel to read the full guidance and keep a dated record that they have done so. Set up a process for reviewing updates as they are published.
Worker rights: Review how you communicate employment rights to sponsored workers. Can you provide evidence that every sponsored worker, not just new starters, has been informed?
Right to work: Extend your checking processes to cover all workers you engage, including self-employed contractors and secondees. Make sure your HR team is also confident with online share code checks and understands the move to eVisas.
Budgets: Update your cost projections for international recruitment to reflect the April 2026 fee increases alongside the cumulative rises from 2024 and 2025.
SMS records: Check that the information on your Sponsor Management System is accurate and up to date; job titles, salary details, working hours.
Settlement planning: If employees are approaching the current five-year qualifying period, consider whether applying for ILR sooner rather than later makes sense before the earned settlement reforms take effect.
Training: Brief your HR and payroll teams on the changes. The pay period rules in particular require awareness beyond just your immigration lead.
How Immtell Can Help
Immtell provides regulated UK immigration advice to employers holding or applying for a sponsor licence. We work with small and medium-sized businesses, corporates, and founders on sponsor licence applications, compliance health checks, mock Home Office audits, right to work training, and day-to-day Certificate of Sponsorship management.
If you are not sure whether your payroll arrangements meet the new pay period rules, or you want a proper review of your sponsor licence compliance before the Home Office comes knocking, we can help.
Book a call to discuss with us further.
