The Home Office has fundamentally changed how salary compliance is assessed for Skilled Worker visa holders. The old approach looked at annual salary figures. The new framework, under paragraph SW 14.3B, examines every individual pay period, meaning a single month of underpayment can trigger a compliance failure even if the annual total looks fine.
What's changed: Sponsors must now satisfy two tests simultaneously, a per-period going rate test for every hour worked, and an averaging test over three months, twelve weeks, or seventeen weeks depending on how frequently the worker is paid.
Who's most at risk: Workers paid at exactly the minimum going rate have zero margin for error. A payroll mistake of even a few hundred pounds in one month cannot be fixed by paying more the following month.
Sectors most affected: Health and social care, technology, hospitality, logistics, and any employer using variable-hours or bonus-heavy pay structures.
What sponsors must do now: Audit payroll records at the pay-period level, update record-keeping systems, verify that employment contracts match actual payment arrangements, and brief HR and payroll teams immediately.
These changes are already in force. If your sponsored workers have variable pay, fluctuating hours, or salaries set at the going rate minimum, your organisation could be one payroll error away from a compliance failure. Click here to read the full article and protect your sponsor licence.
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