UK unveils 'earned settlement': ten years as the default wait, but care workers keep their five-year path
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has told MPs that the right to settle permanently in the UK will no longer be granted almost automatically after five years but will be "earned" through contribution and character. Most migrants will face a new ten-year default, while the highest earners can settle within three years. After a Labour backlash, care workers who arrived before May 2025 keep their five-year route.
Presenting the government's "earned settlement" policy to the House of Commons on Monday 2 November, Mahmood said settlement "should not be automatic, it should be earned". Under the rules published by the Home Office, the highest earners will be able to settle within three years. People earning more than £50,271, and some public-service workers such as doctors, nurses and teachers, will qualify after five years. Others will face a new default of ten years, and those who have breached immigration rules will wait at least twenty.
Everyone applying, regardless of when they arrived, will first have to meet four conditions: a spotless criminal record (the current threshold is a suspended sentence of 12 months), English spoken to a high standard, no debt owed to the taxpayer, and three years of National Insurance contributions.
The most contested element was the proposal, first floated in a November 2025 consultation, to make foreign care workers already in the UK wait up to 15 years. After criticism from several Labour MPs and cabinet colleagues, the government has changed course: care workers who arrived on, or switched into, the route before the May 2025 immigration white paper, who met their visa conditions and earn at least £25,000 a year, can still settle after five years. The roughly quarter who do not qualify will be offered a new five-year visa, no longer tied to their old employer, before they can apply for settlement. The government says 1,800 exploitative employers have lost their sponsor licences.
The Conservatives called the change a "U-turn" that will cost taxpayers billions. Mahmood rejected that, telling the BBC that about 500,000 people "will not now settle at five years" and that the revised plan will still save billions, with an impact assessment due later. The Home Office estimates that between 1.3 and 2.2 million people would have been due to settle in the UK between 2026 and 2030, with a central estimate of 1.9 million.