UK Health and Care Worker Visa, formerly known as Tier 2 Health and Care visa, allows professional health workers to come and work in the UK. You can apply for up to a 5-year visa. At the end of your visa period, you can extend it. Furthermore, you might be eligible to obtain indefinite leave to remain, also known as ILR, at the end of your first 5 years if you are eligible in terms of continuous length of stay and the other criterion.
Health and Care Worker visa applications are assessed by a point-based system. There are some mandatory and tradeable documents you need to submit with your application. For example, while a Certificate of Sponsorship is a mandatory document, you do not have to hold a PhD degree to apply even though your degree could provide you additional points. We will shortly discuss these documents in detail.
To apply for a health and care visa, as a first step, you can check your occupation eligibility through occupation codes allocated by the government. These briefly include nurses, dental nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, pharmacists, midwives and many more health and care worker job titles. Please do contact us if you wish to check your professional eligibility to obtain a UK health and care visa!
The second step will be to prepare documents indicating that you are or will be working for a UK-based employer that is authorized by the NHS. While your employer could be the NHS itself, it can also be a health or social care organisation recognized by the NHS. Your employer must assign you a Certificate of Sponsorship which will include significant details such as your occupation title, employment period, salary amount etc.
Your salary and duties are, therefore, specified before your visa application through your Certificate of Sponsorship. There are also designated going rates for the salary amounts for each eligible job listed for the health & care worker visa. However, your minimum salary amount must be £20.480 as long as the going rate of your job is not higher than this. You usually cannot be offered less than the going rate amount, for it is a non-tradeable item. However, there are some circumstances where you can be offered less than the going rate amount. Please let us hear your story before you start your application so that we can assist you!
Another non-tradeable and mandatory part of the health & care visa application is that you prove your English language skills. You must prove that you can write, understand, speak, and read in English at least at B1 level. While you can prove your skills through an English test at a test centre approved by the UK government, there are some cases where you do not have to attend an exam. You can contact us with your questions regarding the exceptional circumstances.
Apart from these three non-tradeable items, you will also be expected to prove your education and occupation history through documents. Please kindly be informed that while each case has its own special details, health & care visa applicants must obtain at least 70 points to be eligible.