UK ILR Changes: 5, 10, or More Years — What Shabana Mahmood Actually Announced

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a shake-up of the route to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR): some applicants — mainly in healthcare — could see the wait drop to 5 years, while others stay on a 10-year path, but none of this is law yet, just an announcement with no confirmed start date.

In short

• Shabana Mahmood’s announcement is still just that — an announcement, not law: no date has been set for the rules to take effect.
• Healthcare workers on a Health and Care Worker visa before May 2025 would reach ILR in 5 years.
• Other Skilled Worker holders face a 10-year wait for ILR if their CoS salary is below £50,000, or 5 years if it’s £50,000 or above.
• At a CoS salary of £125,000 or above, the route to ILR shortens to 3 years.
• From January 2027 the PSW visa will shorten to 18 months, and from March 2027 the required English level will rise to B2.

What Shabana Mahmood Announced — and Why It Isn’t Law Yet

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced new proposals to change how long it takes to reach ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain, the UK’s permanent residence status). Her remarks centred on “earning” — the applicant’s income, which she said would determine the route to permanent status.

The original proposal reportedly affected a group of around 728,000 people who faced a delay in reaching settled status; that figure was later revised down to roughly 57,000 people. That revision alone is reason enough to watch how far the announced parameters could still shift before any final version is published.

The key point to hold onto: right now this is only an announcement, not rules that have come into force. Mahmood herself, along with commentators, has stressed that the proposed timeframes are still up for debate in Parliament, not an enacted law. No date has been given for when any new conditions would take effect — that will only become clear once a final version of the rule is published.

right now this is only an announcement, not rules that have come into force

That means every timeframe being discussed right now — 5, 10, 15, or any other number of years — is provisional. What changes will be made during the debate, and how any of this will actually work in practice, remain open questions that will only be answered as the legislation moves forward.

Who Gets ILR in 5 Years: Healthcare Workers and the May 2025 Cutoff

According to media reports (including the BBC), the five-year route to ILR is aimed at healthcare workers — care workers — earning a minimum of £25,000, who arrived in the UK before May 2025.

Legally, what matters isn’t the date someone entered the country, but the date they came onto a Health and Care Worker visa. The right to the shorter route applies in two situations: if someone entered the UK on that specific visa before May 2025, or if they were already in the country and switched onto a Health and Care Worker visa before that date. That’s the point from which the “clock” toward ILR starts running.

The type of visa someone originally arrived on doesn’t matter. A student visa or any other entry category doesn’t by itself qualify someone for the five-year route — the rule applies only to those who were already on a Health and Care Worker visa by May 2025. Arriving in the country earlier on some other basis doesn’t create that entitlement.

For other Skilled Worker visa holders outside healthcare, a different timeframe has been announced — ten years instead of five.

Other Skilled Worker Holders: The 10-Year Route and Its Grey Areas

For holders of the standard Skilled Worker visa, a 10-year route to ILR has been announced. This covers visa holders working outside healthcare: owners and staff of restaurants, shops, takeaways, the hospitality industry, and the construction sector.

This is exactly the category raising the most questions. Businesses in these sectors are inherently unstable, and a visa holder’s immigration status depends directly on whether their company survives for the full 10 years. One open question is what happens to someone’s path to ILR if the business goes under or winds down during that period — would the visa holder still reach settlement later, or would they have to start the route over.

A practising human rights lawyer, commenting on the announcement, described it as more of a political statement than a finished set of rules, noting that the final wording is still unknown. In his assessment, requiring a 10-year wait for anyone outside healthcare looks unfair — particularly given how much the situation could change over that period. From a human rights law standpoint, he said, that approach is hard to call favourable to applicants.

From a human rights law standpoint, he said, that approach is hard to call favourable to applicants

CoS Salary Decides Whether It’s 5, 10, or 3 Years

For Skilled Worker holders, the route to ILR isn’t determined by total household income — it’s determined by the salary stated on the main applicant’s Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS). A spouse’s or dependent child’s earnings have no bearing on the CoS and don’t affect which route applies — only the figure the sponsorship certificate was issued against counts.

CoS salary	Route to ILR
below £50,000	10 years
£50,000 and above	5 years
£125,000 and above	3 years

An example from the breakdown: with a CoS of £52,000, an applicant falls onto the five-year route, while a CoS below £50,000 puts them on the ten-year route. As the breakdown notes, the £50,000 threshold for the five-year route already existed before this announcement — it isn’t a new figure.

There’s also a borderline case worth flagging: an applicant who has already worked three years on a Skilled Worker visa earning above £50,000 and wonders whether that qualifies them for ILR sooner. According to the material, the answer is no: the rule counts five continuous years at a salary above £50,000, so after three years worked, two more remain under the same conditions before the right to ILR kicks in.

What Happens If the Employer Loses Its Sponsor Licence

A visa won’t be cancelled even if an applicant lacks five continuous years of pay slips or payroll records. Instead of revoking the visa, these workers are being promised an extra shot: a one-off extension of their current visa.

What remains an open legal question is on what basis that extension would be granted. It’s unclear whether it would be issued without a new Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), or whether the current employer would need to extend the CoS in their own name.

The problem gets worse if the sponsor licence has already been revoked by that point, taking the CoS down with it. Technically, such a worker’s time in the country runs past even the already-extended 10 years — there’s no longer a sponsor left to extend the certificate. In practice, it’s not uncommon for a company to have closed years earlier, or its owner to have disappeared and gone uncontactable, while the person stays in the UK the whole time, filing applications such as FLR just to hold onto legal status in the system.

It has been stated that such workers will get their stay extended by another five years, but on what basis and through what procedure remains unexplained.

Other Timeframes: 15, 18, 20 Years, and Changes for Students and English

Beyond the 5- and 10-year routes, the announcement mentioned other timeframes — but with even less clarity around them:

• 15 years — for categories claiming benefits; the current route for them is 20 years, and there are plans to cut it to 15.
• 20 years — the so-called “20 years rule,” which concerns undocumented migrants and their ability to regularise status after a long period in the country without lawful status. The question of whether this rule would be loosened came up, but no direct answer followed from the announcement.
• 18 years — another period of undocumented residence mentioned, whose relationship to the “20 years rule” isn’t clear from the material.

Separately from the ILR timeframes, other changes were announced that haven’t drawn the same pushback as the main routes:

• from January 2027, the length of the Post-Study Work (PSW) visa will be cut to 18 months;
• from March 2027, the required English language level for the visa will rise to B2.

According to the speaker, both changes were announced earlier and accepted without objection — unlike the 5- and 10-year timeframes for people already holding visas in the country.

Spouse Visa and ILR Dependants: No Changes for Now

As of the announcement, no changes have been made to the spouse visa — neither for those applying on the basis of marriage to a British passport holder, nor for dependants of ILR holders. This covers both the general question of revising timeframes for spouse visas and the specific case where the partner already holds British citizenship: no announcements have been made for this category yet.

Pharmacists were mentioned separately: according to the wording used, they’re classified under the healthcare sector — alongside nurses and doctors — and teachers were grouped in as well. But no explanation was given for how the new timeframes apply to other professions within that sector.

Can the New Rules Be Challenged in Court

The 10-year wait for “ordinary” Skilled Worker holders, compared with the 5-year route for healthcare workers, looks, in the lawyer’s assessment, not especially compatible with human rights law: an applicant suddenly shifted onto a longer route ends up in a position where it’s unclear what their situation will look like in 10 years. That’s precisely why a rise in litigation against the new rules is expected.

Whether an applicant can go to court depends on how the announced rules are actually implemented — which isn’t known yet. There’s already a past court ruling touching on a similar situation, but how a challenge to the new rules would play out will only become clear once the rules themselves take effect.

If an applicant believes their case was assessed unfairly, they’ll have the right to an administrative review and the right to go to court. How actively applicants end up using those rights, and how many cases reach the courts, will only be clear once the final rules are published.

The rule on 10-year “lawful residency” (long-term residence history), meanwhile, isn’t changing — it stays as it is, with no changes announced on that front.

System Abuse — and What to Do If an Employer Is Exploiting a Worker

Buying and selling a visa is both a criminal offence and an immigration offence: both sides of the deal are liable, buyer and seller alike. The scam typically works like this: a worker is persuaded that after five years on a Skilled Worker visa, the visa will automatically convert into permanent status; they bring their family and children into the country, and then discover the visa was obtained fraudulently and they’re being defrauded a second time — sometimes several times over, losing their entire savings in the process.

they’re being defrauded a second time — sometimes several times over, losing their entire savings in the process

Among Skilled Worker visa holders issued visas before May 2025, there genuinely are cases of system abuse — that’s openly acknowledged. But alongside them are many people who did everything honestly, got their visa and job properly, and then became victims of fraudulent employers themselves.

If an employer is exploiting a worker — through violence, harassment, or sexual harassment — a case can be filed under modern slavery provisions. Right now, that’s considered one of the more workable routes specifically for people genuinely being exploited.

The main recommendation for anyone currently holding a visa under the old Skilled Worker rules — on a 5-, 10-, or 15-year route — is not to fall into illegal status. The priority is to formalise your employment wherever you’re working, keep working, and if needed, file a case with proper legal advice, while staying in the country through lawful means.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to the visa if an applicant doesn’t have enough continuous years of work because they changed employers under Skilled Worker?

Lacking five continuous years of employment doesn’t by itself cancel the visa — such workers have been promised a one-off extension of their current visa. It remains unclear on what basis that extension would be granted: whether a new Certificate of Sponsorship would be required, or whether the current employer would need to extend the CoS in their own name.

Can an applicant leave the UK temporarily and come back to continue on the route to ILR?

The material doesn’t address this directly, but based on how the “clock” toward ILR is described — counted from the point of holding a Health and Care Worker visa, or from continuous Skilled Worker employment — it points to a continuous period of residence and employment, not a cumulative total with gaps.