In short
The Home Office changed how it measures Skilled Worker salary compliance on 8 April 2026. Sponsors can no longer "average up" a low-paid month with a higher-paid one. From now on, salary must hit the required threshold in every individual pay period, or be averaged across a strict 3-month or 12-week window. The Home Office now cross-references your payroll against HMRC RTI data automatically.
1. What actually changed on 8 April 2026
Before 8 April 2026, sponsors could broadly demonstrate compliance by showing that a sponsored worker’s annual salary met the relevant threshold. A quiet month or a delayed bonus did not matter much, provided the year-end figure stacked up.
That is gone.
The Home Office published a revised version of Sponsor Guidance Part 2: Sponsor a Worker (version 04/26), and added a new rule to Appendix Skilled Worker at paragraph SW 14.3B. The new test is whether the sponsored worker is paid the required salary in every pay period in isolation, with limited averaging windows for monthly and weekly payrolls.
In plain English: if your sponsored Skilled Worker is paid monthly and one month falls short, you cannot rely on a higher-paid month to balance it out across the year. That single month is now a compliance breach.
The Home Office stated reason is that sponsors had been using deferred bonuses, year-end commission, and creative pay structures to keep stated annual salaries above the threshold while paying very little for stretches of the year. The new rule closes that gap.
Why this matters: Sponsors who have not reviewed their payroll structure since 8 April 2026 are likely already in breach without knowing it.
2. Who the new rule applies to
The pay-per-period rule applies in two situations:
A. New CoS assigned on or after 8 April 2026. Any Skilled Worker, Senior or Specialist Worker (Global Business Mobility), Scale-up, or Minister of Religion CoS issued from that date onwards is bound by the new rule for the full duration of the sponsorship.
B. Existing sponsored workers under compliance review. If the Home Office conducts a compliance visit on or after 8 April 2026 and reviews payroll records from any pay period from that date forward, the new rule is the standard they will apply, even if the underlying CoS was assigned before 8 April.
The practical takeaway: there is no transition period for checking. Even if your CoS pre-dates the change, your payroll from 8 April 2026 onwards is being judged by the new rule.
3. The pay-per-period rule explained
The new test reads, paraphrasing the guidance:
A sponsored worker must be paid at least the required minimum salary in each pay period, calculated as the going rate for every hour worked in that period, and not less than the general salary threshold pro-rated to the hours worked.
Three things to unpack:
Required salary in each pay period. Whatever frequency you pay (weekly, fortnightly, monthly), each individual cycle is now its own compliance test.
Going rate for every hour worked. If your sponsored worker role has a going rate of £19.50 per hour and they work 160 hours in a month, that month must show salary of at least £3,120 attributable to those hours.
General threshold pro-rated. The general Skilled Worker threshold (currently £38,700 for most new CoS, with transitional rates for some) must also be met, pro-rated to hours worked. So if a sponsored worker takes a partial-pay week of statutory sick leave, the salary for that period must still meet the pro-rata threshold for the hours actually worked.
The rule is interlocking: you have to clear both the going rate test and the general threshold test, in every pay period.
4. 3-month and 12-week averaging windows
The Home Office has not made averaging illegal, it has made the windows much shorter.
Monthly or less frequent payroll (most UK sponsors):
The salary paid over any rolling 3-month period must be at least 3/12 of the annual minimum salary threshold for that role.
Weekly or fortnightly payroll (common in hospitality, care, logistics):
The salary paid over any 12-week period must be at least 12/52 of the annual minimum salary threshold.
In practice, this means a sponsored worker who has one bad month can still be made compliant, but the corrective payment has to land within the next two months (for monthly payroll) or within the rolling 12-week window (for weekly payroll). Anything outside those windows is permanent breach.
| Payroll frequency | Averaging window | Minimum salary in window |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 12 weeks (rolling) | 12/52 of annual minimum |
| Fortnightly | 12 weeks (rolling) | 12/52 of annual minimum |
| Monthly | 3 months (rolling) | 3/12 of annual minimum |
| Quarterly or less frequent | Not permitted for SW | N/A |
5. How the Home Office cross-checks your payroll
This is the part most sponsors underestimate.
The Home Office has confirmed that compliance monitoring now runs in two parallel streams:
Stream 1: HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) cross-check. UK Visas and Immigration receives an automatic feed from HMRC showing PAYE submissions for every sponsored worker. The data is matched against the salary stated on the original CoS. Discrepancies trigger an automatic flag.
Stream 2: On-site or virtual compliance visit. A Home Office compliance officer reviews your HR systems, contracts, payslips, P60s, time-and-attendance records, and your record of any salary adjustments. They are explicitly looking for any pay period that fell below the threshold without correction within the averaging window.
Practical reality: the RTI cross-check happens silently in the background. You will not be told about a discrepancy until the compliance team decides whether to send it to enforcement. By the time you hear from them, the breach is on file.
The combination means that you cannot rely on the Home Office “not noticing” a low-paid month. They will see it.
6. The 5-point sponsor audit (do this week)
If you sponsor any Skilled Worker, run this audit before the end of the next pay cycle.
Step 1: List every active sponsored worker. Pull the list from your Sponsor Management System (SMS) and reconcile it against your payroll. Any worker on SMS who is not on payroll is an immediate red flag.
Step 2: Pull pay records for the last 6 pay periods. Monthly sponsors need 6 months of payslips. Weekly sponsors need 12 weeks plus a buffer.
Step 3: For each pay period, calculate two figures. First, the going rate × hours worked in that period. Second, the general threshold pro-rated to hours worked. The salary paid must equal or exceed the higher of the two.
Step 4: Identify any shortfalls and check the averaging window. A shortfall is only a breach if it cannot be corrected within the next 2 months (monthly) or next 12 weeks (weekly/fortnightly). Run the rolling-window maths.
Step 5: Document everything. Save the audit as a dated PDF. If the Home Office comes calling, contemporaneous evidence that you ran the audit is itself a mitigating factor.
7. Six places sponsors get tripped up
These are the patterns we see most often when running compliance reviews for clients:
Salary sacrifice schemes. Pension or cycle-to-work salary sacrifice reduces the gross salary that the Home Office counts. If your sponsored worker has elected for a sacrifice scheme and the post-sacrifice salary falls below the threshold, that is a breach, even if the original gross was fine.
Bonus timing. A bonus paid in March does not help an underpaid period in November. Bonuses count in the pay period in which they are paid, not the period they relate to.
Unpaid leave. Statutory unpaid leave (parental, jury service, sabbaticals) reduces hours worked. If you do not pro-rate the threshold properly for the period, you can drift below the floor.
Promotion or pay change without CoS update. A pay rise above the previous CoS salary is fine. A pay cut, a change in hours, or a change in role almost always requires a new CoS.
Variable-hour contracts. Hospitality and care home sponsors are particularly exposed. If a sponsored worker is contracted for 39 hours a week and works 30 in a quiet week, the salary for that week must still cover the threshold for 30 hours at the going rate, not 39.
Deductions. Uniform deductions, accommodation deductions, training cost recovery, anything that reduces net pay but is itemised on the payslip can pull a borderline worker under the threshold. Deductions that are recovered later still count in the period they are taken.
8. Penalties for getting it wrong
The Home Office has a graduated enforcement approach, but the worst end of the scale is severe.
Lowest tier: licence action plan. A formal written notice that requires you to remediate within a set window (usually 3 months). Fee chargeable.
Middle tier: licence downgrade. Your sponsor licence rating drops from A to B. You cannot assign new CoS until you complete a remedial action plan and pay an upgrade fee.
Top tier: licence revocation. Your sponsor licence is cancelled. All sponsored workers have their leave curtailed (usually to 60 days). You cannot apply for a new licence for 12 months at minimum, often 5 years.
Civil penalty for illegal working. If a sponsored worker is found to be working without valid permission as a result of a breach, the standard civil penalty regime applies: up to £60,000 per worker for a repeat breach.
For sponsors who employ overseas workers as a meaningful share of their workforce, licence revocation is effectively an existential event.
9. How a Glasgow sponsor handled it
A 40-employee Glasgow-based care home group came to us in late April 2026 after a compliance officer flagged three pay periods across two sponsored Senior Care Workers. The flag came from the HMRC RTI cross-check.
The shortfall in each case was small: between £40 and £180 below the pro-rated threshold for the period, caused by a shift swap that reduced contracted hours by half a shift and was not adjusted in their payroll system.
We ran the 5-point audit, identified six further pay periods at risk across the wider workforce, and corrected those before the formal compliance visit. We also reworked their payroll routine so that hours worked in each pay period are reconciled against the CoS-stated minimum before payroll is finalised.
Outcome: action plan issued, no downgrade, no penalty. Cost: significantly less than a B-rating remediation would have cost.
The lesson is that the Home Office is currently more interested in remediation than punishment for first-time small breaches, but only if you can show the audit work was done before the visit, not after.
Sources
- Sponsor Guidance Part 2: Sponsor a Worker, version 04/26 (Home Office)
- Appendix Skilled Worker, paragraph SW 14.3B
- Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC 1691 (March 2026)
- Skilled Worker caseworker guidance, version 04/26
This article is general information, not legal advice. Sponsor compliance turns on the specific facts of your business and workforce. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting on any of the points above.
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