London Councils To Be Hit Hardest By Closure Of Social Care Visa
In some councils last year, up to 60 per cent of the social care workforce was made up of workers from overseas (Alamy)
6 min read
Councils in the capital face being hardest hit by the closure of the visa route for social care workers, analysis of workforce data carried out by PoliticsHome has revealed.
The analysis also found that in some councils last year, up to 60 per cent of the social care workforce was made up of workers from overseas.
In May, the Labour government announced that it would end the UK care worker immigration route as part of a wider effort to reduce net migration. Under the changes, which came into force in July, adult social care providers are no longer able to sponsor new staff from abroad on a visa.
Care workers already in the country on a visa will be able to continue working in the UK sector until July 2028.
When the policy was first announced, PoliticsHome reported concerns that the new restrictions could see the sector “tip over the edge”, despite a three-year transition period, as in recent years it has become highly reliant on workers from abroad.
The decision by the Conservative government led by Boris Johnson to relax visa rules led to a surge in social care workers coming to the UK from abroad following the coronavirus pandemic. Despite this, there are currently around 130,000 vacancies in the care sector, prompting concerns that further changes could mean care homes face acute shortages.
Pressures on the sector are expected to be exacerbated by the UK's ageing population.
In 2023-24, some councils recruited up to 60 per cent of their workforce from overseas, meaning a large proportion of the workforce will have to be replaced after 2028, according to analysis by PoliticsHome.
At the same time, despite a rise in the national living wage, the number of British staff working in the sector fell between 2024-25.
Responding to the PoliticsHome analysis, associate director at the Institute for Government think tank, Stuart Hoddinott, said: “International staff have been vital for staffing the adult social care sector in the last few years, with some areas relying on those staff far more than others.”
Hoddinott added: “Scrapping the health and care visa will make it more difficult to fill vacancies and could mean that some people go without the care they need.”
The government hopes that its planned fair pay agreement for adult social care will increase the attractiveness of the career for UK workers and plug those gaps. However, such an arrangement is yet to be implemented and would need increased funding to cover the costs for providers.
There are concerns about a lack of joined-up thinking, with Hoddinott telling PoliticsHome: "It was extremely risky to further restrict overseas recruitment without being able to immediately replace it with a scheme to boost domestic recruitment.”
These fears are echoed by Jess McGregor, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, who told PoliticsHome any fair pay agreement "must be fully funded by central government, or risk worsening an already difficult financial environment for councils and adult social care”.
Hoddinott said that the decision to scrap the health and care visa had been driven by the politics of immigration, "rather than the needs of the adult social care sector or the people who rely on care".
PoliticsHome analysed which local authorities face being most acutely affected by the closure of the visa route by mapping those that have the highest proportion of overseas social care workers, when compared to the demographics of their population more widely.
This helps identify local authorities where members of the overseas population moved there specifically to do jobs in the local care sector, and so stand to be most affected by the changes in the years up to and including 2028.
It found that, by region, London will be hardest hit by the changes, with 25 of its 32 boroughs appearing in the top 50.
The borough set to be hardest hit is Havering, where 49 per cent of social care staff come from overseas, compared to just 2 per cent of the population.
Meanwhile, in Croydon, 55 per cent of social care staff were from overseas in 2023-24, compared to 10 per cent of the general population.
A similar picture is revealed in Harrow, Waltham Forest, Greenwich, and Redbridge, which appear in the top 10 areas most likely to be impacted.
Speaking to PoliticsHome, Cllr Shantanu Rajawat, London Councils’ executive member for Health, said that the changes to visa rules will mean it is "even more important that the government works with boroughs to address the challenges we face in our social care system, particularly when it comes to staffing".
The South East also risks being acutely impacted by the changes announced earlier this year, with 13 councils in the region being among those most affected.
In Kent, where last year 29 per cent of the county's core social care workforce came from overseas, the Reform UK council leader, Linden Kemkaran, wrote to the government to set out her concerns over how the county would be impacted.
Kemkaran was elected as leader of Kent Council in May (Alamy)
Kemkaran said the "sudden" move had "put at risk the welfare of a lot of our most elderly and vulnerable people out there in Kent who depend on foreign workers at the moment, coming over to do these jobs, to look after them".
"If I hadn't written that letter and people had died because we had a sudden lack of carers, I would be held responsible for that," Kemkaran told PoliticsHome.
Kemkaran said it was her duty to "raise the alarm" and the changes would "fundamentally affect how we deliver our services here in Kent".
She said that the move to end the recruitment of social care workers from abroad was "an irresponsible thing to have done", adding she thought the government had made the move "purely because they wanted to show they were being tough on immigration".
While the data raises serious concerns for London and the South East, other areas of the country, such as the East Midlands and the East, could also see disruption.
ADASS' McGregor said: “The statistics may suggest some areas are more reliant on international workers than others, but the truth is that every region across the country needs to attract people to work in adult social care and in some places, without vital international workers, services would have likely faced severe disruption."
PoliticsHome has contacted the Home Office for comment.
