Graphic showing the number of skilled visas issued in 2023, 24 and 25.<\/a><\/p>\nIn December, warning of sharp declines in international recruitment and stalling domestic recruitment, the Royal College of Nursing\u2019s chief nursing officer, Lynn Woolsey, said the profession faced \u201cthe worst of all worlds\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cAt the current rate, the numbers of domestic nurses joining will nowhere near make up for the collapse in overseas nursing staff coming to the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinisters need to wake up. If they continue to push overseas nursing staff out the door and make the UK an unattractive destination, while doing next to nothing to invest and grow the domestic workforce, their reforms will die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commenting on the new research, Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, the chief executive of Work Rights Centre, said: \u201cThe sharp decline in migrant professionals coming to work in UK hospitals, research institutes and schools raises serious questions about the costs of the government\u2019s narrow focus on reducing migration.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo hospital is likely to welcome a 93% drop in overseas nurses, at a time when 25,000 nursing vacancies remain unfilled, and no British worker will want the pressure of working a double shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeanwhile, migrant workers who can still come to work in the UK face higher costs, longer routes to settlement, and risk labour exploitation by arriving on visas that tie them to employers. Ministers must look at what workers and public services really need.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese figures paint a picture of an impending car crash for our hospitals and care homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The analysis shows that visas issued to science, research, engineering and technology professionals from overseas fell to 9,072 in 2025, from a peak of 24,843 in 2022.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile visas for teaching and education professionals fell 71% in two years \u2013 from a peak of 2,611 in 2023 to 751 in 2025. And there were 73% fewer visas issued to skilled tradespeople, from a peak of 14,079 in 2023 to 3,848 in 2025.<\/p>\n
Vicol added that the UK faced \u201cimplications at every level, at fiscal level, at economic level, and particularly with regard to the sustainability of public services\u201d from its approach to migration.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cWe know the government has really ambitious housebuilding targets. I can\u2019t see how this decline in skilled trades professionals is going to support that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nadra Ahmed, the executive chair of the National Care Association, which represents about 5,000 social care providers, said: \u201cThe reason we need international recruits is because no government has given us any solutions to getting a domestic workforce.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is going to look after the people that we support? The domestic workforce is not applying, and international recruits have been excellent in the roles they fill and helped us keep the sector going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon Bottery, senior fellow for social care policy at The King\u2019s Fund, said reduced overseas recruitment was now a \u201cfact of life\u201d for the social care sector, and \u201ca much greater emphasis on recruiting and developing a homegrown workforce\u201d was needed to sustain it.<\/p>\n
Ahmed said the decline in visas being issued came at a time when care workers were leaving for European countries including Germany and Ireland for more \u201cattractive conditions\u201d, while others were \u201cdisplaced\u201d after providers lost the right to sponsor them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have started to see care homes closing \u2013 people are throwing in the towel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Home Office was approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospitals and care homes in the UK face \u201can impending car crash\u201d, experts have warned, as research shows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-303848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}