Thousands of migrants who are approaching five years in the UK are expected to receive much-needed clarity on their future settlement rights before the end of 2026, after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed that the government intends to set out its new “earned settlement” policy later this year.
The announcement is particularly significant for Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker visa holders who entered Britain from 2022 onwards and have been planning around the existing route to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR).
Under current Immigration Rules, qualifying Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker visa holders can normally apply for ILR after five years. The official GOV.UK guidance still states that applicants on these routes must generally have lived and worked in Britain for five years before applying.
However, the government is developing a fundamentally different settlement system that would normally increase the baseline qualifying period to 10 years and allow that period to move up or down depending on factors including earnings, occupation, English ability and other forms of contribution.
Crucially, the final details have not yet been decided, and no general 10-year replacement of the existing five-year Skilled Worker settlement rule has yet taken effect.
Decision This Year
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mahmood said decisions on earned settlement would be made “very soon” and confirmed that the government intends to publish the new policy later in 2026.
The timing matters because a large group of migrants who arrived in Britain during 2022 will begin reaching five years of residence during 2027.
Mahmood told MPs she was aware that, without a change to the rules, a significant group of people who arrived in 2022 could begin qualifying for settlement from February 2027.
She also made an important point for migrants already living in Britain: immigration applications are normally decided according to the Immigration Rules in force when the application is made, rather than the rules that existed when the migrant first entered the country.
That means migrants who originally entered on a route offering settlement after five years cannot assume automatically that the same rules will necessarily apply when they eventually submit an ILR application.
At the same time, the government is considering transitional protections that could shield some existing migrants from the full effect of the reforms.
Five Years Still Applies
For migrants approaching settlement now, it is important to distinguish the current rules from the government’s future proposals.
The existing GOV.UK guidance continues to say that Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker applicants may qualify for ILR after completing five years on qualifying routes, provided they meet the other requirements. The Immigration Rules themselves currently contain a five-year continuous residence requirement for Skilled Worker settlement.
Therefore, saying that the UK has already universally changed ILR from five to 10 years would be inaccurate.
The government has committed itself to a new earned-settlement framework, but the detailed final model — particularly how it will affect people already in Britain — remains under development.
The Home Office has repeatedly told Parliament that the final model will be announced publicly once it has been decided.
Proposed 10 Years
The starting point in the government’s November 2025 consultation was to increase the standard baseline settlement period for most migrants from five years to 10 years.
Unlike the present system, however, 10 years would not necessarily mean every migrant must wait exactly a decade.
The proposed system uses what the Home Office calls a “time adjustment” model. Applicants could potentially have years deducted from, or added to, their baseline according to their circumstances.
The four broad areas considered by the consultation include character, integration, contribution and residence.
This means the government’s proposed model is better understood as a variable settlement system rather than simply a universal doubling of the existing five-year route.
15-Year Proposal
One of the most controversial elements concerns workers in occupations below RQF Level 6, broadly equivalent to below degree-level skill.
The Home Office consultation proposed a 15-year baseline qualifying period for people sponsored in jobs below RQF Level 6, including relevant workers on Skilled Worker and Health and Care routes. This is particularly important for overseas care workers.
Many care workers entered Britain during the major expansion of Health and Care visa recruitment from 2022 onwards expecting that, if they continued to meet the requirements, they could potentially apply for settlement after five years.
Under the consultation model, some of these workers could instead face a 15-year starting point. But again, this remains part of the proposed framework being considered by the government. The final treatment of these workers, including possible transitional arrangements for people who are already in Britain, has not yet been announced.
Transitional Protection
The biggest unanswered question for many existing migrants is whether they will be protected from retrospective changes.
The government’s original consultation proposed applying the new system to people already in the UK who had not obtained ILR when the relevant new Immigration Rules came into force. At the same time, it specifically asked whether transitional arrangements should be created for migrants already travelling along an existing route to settlement.
Mahmood has now indicated that several options are being considered. These could range from allowing certain existing groups to continue under the five-year system to introducing different arrangements for other groups over a longer transition period. She told MPs that “passporting” particular cohorts through without changing their five-year qualification period was one of the options available, but stressed that the policy had not been settled.
This distinction is critical. It means the government has not yet confirmed that every migrant already in the UK will automatically have their route extended from five to 10 or 15 years.
Equally, it has not guaranteed that everyone who entered expecting five-year settlement will be protected. The answer will depend on the final transitional rules.
Time Already Spent
There has, however, been an important clarification regarding time migrants have already spent lawfully in Britain.
In a parliamentary answer published on 9 September 2026, the Home Office said that although the new model would increase the standard qualifying period to 10 years, time already spent lawfully in the UK on a qualifying route would count towards the qualifying period once the final system is introduced.
This means the proposed reform should not generally be understood as making qualifying migrants restart their residence clock from zero when new rules take effect.
The more difficult question is how many total years each individual will ultimately be required to complete. That will depend on the final model and any transitional protections.
Faster Settlement
The consultation also contains proposals allowing certain migrants to qualify considerably earlier than the standard 10-year baseline.
Under the model consulted on, someone earning taxable income above £50,270 for the three years immediately before applying could receive a five-year reduction.
Someone earning above £125,140 for those three years could receive a seven-year reduction, potentially reducing a 10-year baseline to three years.
The consultation also proposed a five-year reduction for migrants who spend five years working in specified public-service occupations.
The Home Office said this could cover certain medical, education and other public-service professionals whose salaries are determined by national pay scales, although it envisaged restricting the public-service reduction to skilled occupations at RQF Level 6 or above.
Global Talent and Innovator Founder migrants were also proposed to retain routes allowing settlement after around three years, subject to the eventual requirements.
These provisions demonstrate why not every Health and Care visa holder would necessarily receive identical treatment. A doctor in a qualifying skilled public-service occupation, for example, could be treated differently from a care worker employed in an occupation below RQF Level 6.
The final list of occupations qualifying for accelerated public-service settlement has not yet been published.
English Requirement
Integration is another major part of earned settlement. The consultation proposed requiring applicants to demonstrate English at B2 level as part of the settlement system, while applicants demonstrating the higher C1 level could potentially receive a one-year reduction in their qualifying period.
The government has already begun implementing a higher English requirement as an early part of its settlement reforms, but the wider earned-settlement system remains separate from that change and is still being finalised.
Benefits Could Add Years
The consultation also proposed increasing the qualifying period where an applicant had received public funds during their route to settlement in circumstances where such access was permitted.
Under the consultation model, receiving public funds for less than 12 months could add five years, while receiving them for more than 12 months could add 10 years to the relevant baseline.
These were consultation proposals rather than a rule already operating across the settlement system.
The government also consulted on the much broader question of whether access to some public funds should continue to be restricted even after settlement, potentially moving full access to certain benefits closer to the citizenship stage. Again, the final policy is awaited.
Union Opposition
The reforms have drawn significant opposition from trade unions, particularly over their potential effect on people who were recruited to work in health and social care.
Delegates at the Trades Union Congress backed a motion opposing the proposed changes and calling for the existing five-year settlement route to be retained for migrant workers.
UNISON has argued that changing the expected settlement period for workers who came to Britain under existing arrangements would be unfair to staff who planned their lives on the basis of the five-year pathway.
The BBC also reported that the Society of Radiographers told the TUC that numbers of international technicians had fallen by more than 1,500, or around 12%, between January and March 2026. The organisation linked its concerns to uncertainty surrounding settlement and immigration policy. That should be understood as the organisation’s assessment rather than proof that the settlement proposals alone caused the decline.
A peer-reviewed review published in Radiography in September 2026 similarly concluded that prolonged immigration uncertainty may increase occupational stress and intentions among migrant imaging professionals to leave, while noting limitations in the available evidence for establishing direct causation.
200,000 Responses
One reason for the delay in publishing the final system is the scale of the consultation.
The consultation opened on 20 November 2025 and closed on 12 February 2026, receiving more than 200,000 responses from individuals and organisations.
The Home Office has repeatedly told Parliament that officials are analysing those submissions before the Home Secretary decides the final system.
Mahmood told MPs that the volume of responses was greater than expected and that both the consultation feedback and modelling behind the proposed system had taken time to examine.
Economic and equality impact assessments are also expected once the final model has been decided. The government has additionally committed to undertaking a child impact assessment on the final policy.
Settlement Surge
The reforms are being developed ahead of a major expected increase in the number of migrants reaching the point at which they could qualify for permanent residence.
The Home Office consultation forecast that around 1.6 million people could obtain settlement between 2026 and 2030 under its modelling, with annual grants potentially reaching a peak of around 450,000 in 2028.
The government said the expected rise largely reflects the significant increase in immigration during 2022–2024, particularly through Skilled Worker and Health and Care routes.
This is one reason why the 2022 cohort has become particularly important in the settlement debate.
What Migrants Should Know
For people already approaching five years in the UK, four points are particularly important.
First, the existing five-year settlement requirement remains visible in the current Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker Immigration Rules and official guidance.
Second, the government intends to replace the existing approach with an earned-settlement system in which 10 years would normally become the standard baseline and some lower-skilled workers could face a 15-year baseline.
Third, Mahmood has indicated that new rules could affect people who are already in Britain but have not obtained settlement by the time the rules applying to their application change.
Fourth — and potentially most important — the transitional arrangements have not yet been decided. Some existing migrants could potentially remain protected by a five-year pathway, while others could move onto a longer route.
Until the government publishes those arrangements, migrants should be cautious about claims that everyone currently in Britain has definitely been moved to a 10-year or 15-year route.
What Happens Next
The next major development will be the government’s formal response to the earned-settlement consultation and publication of the final policy.
Mahmood has now said this will happen later in 2026, without giving a precise date. She has indicated that the announcement should come in sufficient time before the first large group of people who arrived during 2022 begin becoming eligible for five-year settlement in 2027.
The most important details to watch will be the final baseline settlement periods, the occupations receiving shorter or longer pathways, income-based reductions, treatment of dependants, public-funds rules and, above all, the transitional protections for migrants already living and working in Britain.
For potentially hundreds of thousands of existing migrants, the final transitional rules may prove just as important as the headline move from a five-year to a 10-year standard settlement model. Until those rules are published, the distinction between current law and proposed reform remains essential.