Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The number of UK employers losing their licence to sponsor migrant workers tripled at the end of 2025 as the Home Office tightened its enforcement of immigration rules.
More than 1,500 employers were stripped of their sponsor licence between October and December, up from 541 in the previous three months, according to official figures. A total of 3,100 revocations during 2025 was the highest since records began in 2012.
The clampdown is the result of a government drive to weed out rogue bosses who fuelled a surge in overseas hiring in low-paid sectors such as social care under looser post-Brexit visa rules. Many of these workers have been underpaid or exploited, and some suffering outright fraud and threats.
But business groups and charities say an indiscriminate, zero-tolerance approach to enforcement is also penalising responsible employers, disrupting local authority care arrangements and leaving migrants vulnerable to further exploitation if they cannot find a new employer quickly.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is also finalising reforms intended to prevent hundreds of thousands of low-paid migrants settling in the UK — and potentially qualifying for benefits — unless they can demonstrate that they are making an economic contribution to the country.
Jane Townson, chief executive of the Homecare Association, receives frequent appeals for help from care workers who must find a new sponsor within 60 days of a licence revocation or lose their right to stay in the UK.
She says the Home Office is failing to catch some abusive employers, who find ways to make their payroll pass inspection, while clamping down on others without good reason.
In one recent case, a large care home group had its sponsor licence revoked because four workers out of 400 appeared to be earning less than the rules required, she said, due to maternity leave, sick leave and correction of a previous overpayment. The revocation was reversed after the employer launched a judicial review.
“There is no proportionality or consideration of the impact on the sponsored workers or those they support,” Townson said.
Raina Summerson, group chief executive at care provider Agincare, said the Home Office had revoked the licence of its live-in care arm, which employs 58 sponsored workers, in January without offering any explanation or right of appeal. It was reinstated — also without explanation — only after the group spent some £100,000 challenging the decision.
“Migrant workers must not be punished for the crimes of their employers,” said Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, a charity focused on in-work poverty. “Every licence revocation means all migrant workers sponsored by that employer will lose their income and risk losing their immigration status,” she added.
While centred on the care sector, where abuses have been widespread, data obtained by the Work Rights Centre through a freedom of information request shows that licence revocations have also been rising in other low-paid sectors, such as hospitality and construction, as well as in the tech sector and other professional areas.
Recommended
Lawyers say the jump in revocations follows steps by the Home Office to draw on data held elsewhere in government, including payroll records, that mean it can now spot when a migrant’s earnings fall below the minimum required in any single month.
Kasia Kingsmill, partner at the law firm Brecher, said minor infractions such as poor record-keeping that would in the past have triggered warnings were now “leading to far more serious outcomes”, including employers losing their licences.
The Home Office was also taking a more hardline approach to enforcement in other areas, she noted, stepping up right-to-work checks in the gig economy, making more arrests for illegal working and becoming more stringent about the 60-day deadline for visa holders who lost their job to find a new sponsor or leave the country.
A spokesperson for the Home Office said it was “actively reviewing” whether existing powers “to stamp out visa abuse and prevent exploitation” should be strengthened further.
“We will not tolerate the abuse of our immigration system, which is why skilled worker sponsor revocations are at record levels under this government,” they said.