How to Work in the UK from the Philippines: The Rules As They Stand Now

You have a folder on your phone. A screenshot of a salary threshold. An agency's Facebook post with a UK flag on it. A voice message from a cousin who went in 2023 and told you exactly what to do. Almost none of it is still correct.

Between March 2024 and January 2026 the United Kingdom rewrote these rules four times — on 11 March 2024, 4 April 2024, 22 July 2025 and 8 January 2026. Any guidance written before those dates describes a version of the rules that no longer applies — which is why a screenshot saved last year and a cousin's advice from 2023 can send a family budgeting for a route that no longer exists.

The Care Worker Door Closed. Here Is Exactly What Did Not.

From 22 July 2025, the UK Home Office's sponsor guidance allows a sponsor to sponsor a care worker or senior care worker only where the worker is already in the UK and applying for permission to stay. GOV.UK's Health and Care Worker eligible-jobs page says the same from the other side: it lists 6135 and 6136 for extensions, updates or switches only.

The shape of it, in ten seconds:

Closed from the Philippines: codes 6135 (care workers and home carers) and 6136 (senior care workers), where the application is made from outside the UK.
Still open from overseas: nurses (codes 2231–2237), nursing auxiliaries and assistants (6131), doctors (2211 and 2212), social workers (2461). Separate occupation codes, none of them closed.
The in-country exception: someone already lawfully in the UK — on a Student, Graduate or dependant visa — who has been legally working for that sponsor in code 6135 or 6136 for at least the three months ending on the date the certificate of sponsorship was issued may still switch inside the country, and that application for permission to stay must be made before 22 July 2028. Someone who already holds Skilled Worker permission sponsored in those codes (or the older SOC 2010 codes 6145 or 6146) is on the other limb, and it carries no deadline: they may apply for further permission, with the same sponsor or a different one. If you are on a Student visa, a further test binds on top of that one: you must have completed the course you were sponsored to study, or your certificate of sponsorship must start no earlier than your course completion date, or you must be studying full time for a PhD with a start date no earlier than 24 months after the course began.

If you are in the Philippines with no UK presence, there is no lawful care worker route right now, and an agency telling you otherwise is contradicting the Home Office's own guidance. That is protection, not pessimism.

Card listing which UK care and health occupation codes are closed to applications from the Philippines and which remain open from overseas.

The dependant bar for 6135 and 6136 catches a worker not continuously employed in the UK in those codes since before 11 March 2024, with narrow exceptions for children, and GOV.UK records a parallel restriction for medium-skilled occupations where the worker has not been continuously employed since before 22 July 2025. Nurses, doctors and social workers on the Health and Care Worker visa are not caught by that bar.

Look at what closed and what stayed open, and the pattern is not random. The doors that shut were the ones you could walk through with nothing prepared. Every door still standing — the NMC register, a regulated profession, a genuinely skilled occupation, a qualification a stranger can verify — is reached by building something first. The rules did not remove the opportunity. They moved it behind the preparation.

The Skilled Worker Visa: How the Main Route Actually Works

GOV.UK describes this route in four parts: work for a UK employer approved by the Home Office, hold a certificate of sponsorship from that employer for a job on the list of eligible occupations, be paid the minimum salary, and prove your English. The visa can last up to five years before you extend.

This is an employer-led route — no self-application, no points-shopping without a job, and no way to buy a certificate of sponsorship. Anyone offering to sell you one is selling something that does not lawfully exist.

GOV.UK splits eligible jobs by four-digit occupation code into higher skilled occupations, which are automatically eligible, and medium skilled occupations, eligible only if the job is on the Immigration Salary List, on the Temporary Shortage List, is prison officer code 3314 when extending or switching, or the applicant's first certificate of sponsorship was issued before 22 July 2025. Many jobs Filipinos were previously sponsored into can no longer be sponsored for a new applicant from overseas unless the occupation code sits on one of those two lists. The July 2025 cut-off protects people already in the system, not people joining it. Check the code, not the job title.

The salary rule: £41,700 or the going rate, whichever is higher

The general floor is £41,700 a year or the going rate for your job, whichever is higher — GOV.UK's own wording on both tests. Clearing £41,700 does not help if your code's going rate is higher, and matching the going rate does not help if it falls below £41,700. The £38,700 and £26,200 figures still circulating are not the current general rule.

Lower options exist in the Immigration Rules, each tied to a named category rather than to everyone:

Option A — £41,700 and the full going rate. If you do not fit a category below, this is you.
Option B — £37,500 and 90% of the going rate, if you hold a PhD in a subject relevant to the job.
Option C — £33,400 and 80% of the going rate, if that PhD is in a STEM subject.
Option D — £33,400 and the full going rate, if the job is on the Immigration Salary List.
Option E — £33,400 and 70% of the going rate, if you are a new entrant at the start of your career.
Options F to J — £25,000 up to £31,300, mainly for health and care occupations paid on a national pay scale — what the Rules call ASHE-based rates — or for legacy Skilled Workers applying before 4 April 2030, with Option F also open to prison officers in code 3314.
GOV.UK's eligible-jobs page also records £33,400 for applicants who do not meet the standard requirement and are not in health or education roles.
The same page records £31,300 for prison officers switching or extending.

These cash figures are uprated, so confirm the current ones on GOV.UK before you budget.

The two lists that can lower the bar

If your job is on the Immigration Salary List, GOV.UK states the minimum salary is 80% of the route's usual minimum rate. It applies to the Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker visas, was first published on 4 April 2024 and last updated on 11 November 2025, and a job on it also attracts the reduced visa fee. The bound: only occupations actually named on the published list, only within the UK area the list specifies, and the going-rate rules still apply on top.

The Temporary Shortage List, published on 22 July 2025, covers 52 occupation codes running from 1243 to 8133 — that is the count on the published list as of 14 August 2026, and it changes when the list is amended. It lets a medium-skilled job on the list be applied for as entry clearance as well as by switching or extending. With the Immigration Salary List, it is one of only two lists that keep a medium skilled occupation sponsorable for a new applicant from overseas.

A medium-skilled occupation on neither list has no Skilled Worker route as a new applicant. Both lists are published and both change — read them yourself before building a plan on either.

The Health and Care Worker Visa: Cheaper, and Only for Named Jobs

GOV.UK describes this visa as being for a qualified doctor, nurse, health professional or adult social care professional in an eligible role with a Home-Office-approved employer. Its eligible-occupations page lists 33 codes, including 2211 and 2212 for medical practitioners, 2231 to 2237 for nursing professionals including midwifery nurses, 2461 for social workers and 6131 for nursing auxiliaries and assistants; 6135 and 6136 appear only for extensions, updates or switches. On salary, GOV.UK says you will usually need at least £25,000, or the going rate if that is higher — a figure that is uprated, so confirm it before you budget.

Three things are often bundled together here, and only one of them is exclusive. The £25,000 option is not: Appendix Skilled Worker's Option K gives £25,000 plus the full going rate to anyone sponsored in a listed health or education occupation — one in an eligible SOC 2020 code in Table 3 or Table 3a of Appendix Skilled Occupations — on the ordinary Skilled Worker route, and education occupations are not on this visa's list at all. The lower fee is not exclusive either: this visa carries the lowest fee, but an ordinary Skilled Worker whose job is on the Immigration Salary List pays £628 or £1,235. The healthcare surcharge exemption is the genuinely exclusive one — of the routes in this guide, only this visa carries it. A general Skilled Worker applying from outside the UK pays £819 for up to three years or £1,618 for longer, plus £1,035 a year in healthcare surcharge, and needs £41,700 or the going rate. The cheaper figures are never "the UK work visa cost".

On this route the fee is £324 per person for up to three years and £628 for more than three, the same inside or outside the UK, and GOV.UK states that you, your partner and your children will not pay the healthcare surcharge. Maintenance is £1,270 held for 28 days in a row. Confirm each figure on GOV.UK before you count on it.

At £1,035 per person per year that exemption is one of the largest cash differences in UK immigration for a family, and it belongs to this route alone. An employer sponsoring 6135 or 6136 in England must be registered with the Care Quality Commission. And a health professional whose occupation is not on the list falls back to the ordinary Skilled Worker route — where the floor is £41,700 unless their occupation sits in Table 3 or Table 3a and Option K's £25,000 applies.

English: It Is B2 Now, and One Test Can Do Two Jobs

New Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker applicants must prove English to at least level B2 on the CEFR scale — the requirement GOV.UK's guide pages set for both routes. Someone who held the visa before 8 January 2026 and is extending or updating needs only B1. B1 is now a legacy level for existing holders; every Filipino applying from the Philippines today is on B2.

You do not need to prove your knowledge of English if you have already passed an English language assessment accepted by the relevant regulated professional body — GOV.UK names doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives. For a Filipino nurse, that means the IELTS Academic or OET already accepted by the Nursing and Midwifery Council carries over to the visa. One test, two jobs — so if you are NMC-registered, do not let anyone talk you into booking a separate Secure English Language Test you do not need.

Otherwise, GOV.UK accepts a degree taught in English (a non-UK degree needs an Ecctis assessment), certain UK school qualifications, or a Secure English Language Test. And the exemption for majority-English-speaking nationals names 17 specified countries — the Philippines is not among those named on the page. Plan to prove it.

English is also the one item on this whole list you can start building tonight, before any employer exists.

For Nurses: The NMC Register Comes Before the Ward

For a Philippine-trained nurse, the register comes before the visa. The Nursing and Midwifery Council cannot automatically recognise a Philippine qualification, since automatic recognition is limited to certain European qualifications that meet the EU requirements — an administrative fact about how the register works, not a comment on your training — so it sets out four stages.

Check you're ready — costs, timing, evidence, the pre-application checklist.
Eligibility and qualification — identity evidence, your qualification and registration information, the £140 evaluation fee, which the NMC states is non-refundable, then the outcome.
Test of Competence and registration — health evidence, character evidence, language evidence, a professional indemnity arrangement, the registration fee. Character evidence includes a police clearance certificate from any country you have lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years. That is the item that surprises people, and the one that takes longest to collect.
Evaluation — the NMC contacts your referees, then decides.

On English, the NMC accepts only two tests: IELTS Academic and OET, at scores set per domain — IELTS Academic Listening 7, Reading 7, Writing 6.5, Speaking 7; OET Listening B, Reading B, Writing C+, Speaking B. Scores may be combined across two sittings taken within 12 months of each other, both within two years before your complete application is assessed, all four domains sat together each time, and both sittings the same test type — never one IELTS and one OET. Scores last two years. A test is only one of three evidence types the NMC accepts, alongside being qualified in English and recent practice in English, so "you must take IELTS" is not true. There is also an exception the NMC records for some internationally educated professionals already working for a UK employer — Supporting Information From Employers, or SIFE — which is not a route from the Philippines but matters if you are switching in-country. And because the NMC's scores sit above the visa's B2, for a nurse the regulator's score is the binding one.

The Test of Competence is a computer-based test plus a practical exam. The CBT is delivered by Pearson VUE — Part A, numeracy, 30 minutes and 15 questions; Part B, clinical, 2 hours 30 minutes and 100 questions. The OSCE has 10 stations. Both must be passed within two years of each other, and once both are passed the Test of Competence stays valid for five years. The test must match the part of the register you apply to: adult, mental health, learning disabilities, children's, midwife or nursing associate.

The NMC names three approved OSCE providers — the University of Northampton, Ulster University and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust — and the face-to-face identity check happens at a Test of Competence centre. The NMC records that Pearson VUE has test centres in most countries around the world, so the CBT can normally be sat before you travel; check Pearson VUE for your nearest centre. But the OSCE and the identity check happen only at UK centres, which is why nurses normally travel first on a sponsored Health and Care Worker visa and complete the OSCE after arrival.

On cost, the NMC states the total for fees and tests is £1,170: £140 evaluation, £83 for the first CBT sitting, £794 for the first OSCE sitting, £153 registration. That total assumes no resits and, as the NMC says on the same page, excludes your visa, flights, accommodation and travel inside the UK. A full OSCE resit, where eight or more stations are failed, adds £794; a partial resit of up to seven stations is £397. CBT resits are £83 full, £70 clinical-only, £50 numeracy-only. Regulator fees change, so check the NMC's costs page before you budget.

On how long this takes, the NMC publishes aims rather than promises: it aims to assess a qualification within 14 days, gives you two years after eligibility is confirmed to complete registration including CBT and OSCE, aims to consider a complete registration application within 30 days of receiving everything, and closes an application not progressed within three months of being opened. None of those aims include your own preparation time or a resit.

The nurses we watch move fastest are not the ones who found a vacancy first. They are the ones who already had the English score that serves both regulator and visa, the police clearances, the transcript, the diploma, the professional licence, the referees and the CBT already sat at home. None of that needs an employer's permission.

A Filipino nurse at a table at home in the Philippines sorts the transcript, diploma, licence and clearances needed for NMC registration.

That is a document set, not a job search. The police clearance for every country you have lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years is the slowest document to gather and the one to start first; the transcript, the diploma, the professional licence and your identity evidence sit in the same folder, and your referees can be lined up while you wait.

What This Actually Costs

Every figure below is uprated by regulations — the schedule in force is Home Office immigration and nationality fees, 8 April 2026 — so confirm each on GOV.UK before you budget.

Skilled Worker application from outside the UK: £819 for up to three years, £1,618 for more than three. From inside the UK, £943 and £1,865.
Where the job is on the immigration salary list: £628 and £1,235, the same inside or outside the UK.
Healthcare surcharge: £1,035 per year on the Skilled Worker route.
Money you must show: at least £1,270 held for 28 days in a row, with day 28 falling within 31 days of applying. Not required if you have held a valid UK visa for 12 months or more, or if your employer certifies on the certificate of sponsorship that it will cover your first month's costs.
Dependants: £285 for a partner, £315 for one child, £200 for each additional child, held 28 days in a row.
These amounts stack. GOV.UK's own worked example: £600 covers a partner and one child (£285 + £315), and you would also need £1,270 for your own application — so a family of three shows £1,870. Every amount runs on the same 28-day test, with day 28 within 31 days of that person applying, and the money may be held by you or your partner or child — it does not have to sit in your own account. The waiver above covers the dependant amounts too: where it applies, neither the £1,270 nor the dependant money has to be shown.

The Other Legal Routes, Ranked Honestly

The Graduate route is not for you unless you are already in the UK. To qualify you must be in the UK on a Student or Tier 4 (General) visa, having completed an eligible course — GOV.UK's requirement. It runs two years if you apply on or before 31 December 2026, 18 months from 1 January 2027, and three years for a doctoral qualification. You cannot extend it, but you can switch to another visa such as Skilled Worker. No sponsor or job offer is needed. The fee is £937 plus the healthcare surcharge, usually £1,035 a year — confirm both. It cannot be applied for from the Philippines and it is not a way to enter the UK — that needs a Student visa first, a route this guide does not cover.

Global Talent is for a leader or potential leader in academia or research, arts and culture, or digital technology, aged 18 or over, who is either endorsed by an approved endorsing body or has won an eligible prestigious prize — GOV.UK's own eligibility terms. It runs up to five years at a time and can be extended, with settlement possible after three or five years depending on your field and how you applied. The fee is £766 on the endorsement route — £561 for the endorsement plus £205 — plus the surcharge; confirm both. "No sponsor" is not "no gate", and this is not an alternative to Skilled Worker for a general reader.

The Seasonal Worker visa covers horticulture for up to six months and poultry from 2 October to 31 December in the same year. A sponsor and certificate of sponsorship are required, the fee is £340, and you cannot bring family members with you. Confirm that fee on GOV.UK before you budget. And know this before you treat a season of horticulture as a foot in the door: you cannot switch into the Skilled Worker route from a Seasonal Worker visa from inside the UK. GOV.UK's own remedy is that you must leave the UK and apply for a Skilled Worker visa from abroad instead — the route is closed as a switch, not closed to you.

Who May Lawfully Charge You, and Who May Not

On the UK side. GOV.UK tells sponsors: "You must pay the immigration skills charge yourself. Your licence may be revoked if you ask the sponsored worker to pay the fee or any costs linked to your application." The charge is £480 per 12 months for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,320 for a medium or large one; confirm both figures on GOV.UK before you budget. So being asked to "reimburse the skills charge" is being asked to fund the very thing the employer's licence depends on paying.

A sponsor is responsible for the sponsor licence fee and associated administrative costs, the sponsor guidance says, and the Home Office will normally revoke the licence where a sponsor has recouped, or tried to recoup, any part of it from a worker sponsored on or after 31 December 2024. GOV.UK's own update history records the Certificate of Sponsorship fee being brought inside that prohibition on 1 January 2025, and sponsorship fees and associated administrative costs generally on 9 April 2025.

These prohibitions cover sponsorship costs. They do not make your visa application fee, your healthcare surcharge or your flights the employer's legal responsibility — those stay yours unless the employer agrees otherwise.

Separately, the Department of Health and Social Care's code of practice states that it is illegal under section 6(1) of the Employment Agencies Act 1973 for any recruitment organisation, agency or collaboration based in Great Britain to charge a fee for providing a work-finding service to a job-seeker. Where an employer uses a repayment clause for genuine costs, the code says it must be transparent, proportionate, tapered over approximately three years, and waived in cases of hardship, discrimination or career advancement. That statute is UK law and binds agencies based in Great Britain; it does not cap what a DMW-licensed Philippine agency may lawfully charge, which is governed by Philippine law.

Under the memorandum of understanding between the United Kingdom and the Philippines, signed in October 2021 and published on GOV.UK, no employer, recruitment or placement agency or any entity shall collect from any nurse or healthcare professional to be deployed, directly or indirectly, any placement fee, recruitment-agency costs or other fees that contravene the applicable laws and the rules and regulations of both countries. It covers nurses and other healthcare professionals including physiotherapists, radiographers, occupational therapists, bio-medical scientists and other allied health professions regulated in both countries — and it is verified for those regulated professions only, never for care assistants, hospitality, construction, drivers, seafarers or IT workers. The March 2025 Joint Framework for the Enhanced Partnership between the United Kingdom and the Republic of the Philippines records that the two governments are still implementing it. It also records around 200,000 Filipinos working in the UK, and the role they play in the NHS.

On the Philippine side. Philippine law starts from a monopoly. Article 16 of the Labor Code provides that no person or entity other than the public employment offices may engage in the recruitment and placement of workers except as the Code provides. Illegal recruitment is any act of canvassing, enlisting, contracting, transporting, utilising, hiring or procuring workers, whether for profit or not, when undertaken by a non-licensee or non-holder of authority. Anyone unlicensed who offers or promises employment abroad for a fee to two or more persons is deemed engaged in it. Charging more than the schedule of allowable fees is itself a prohibited act. These instruments name the POEA; the agency that licenses recruitment agencies and publishes the licence directory today is the Department of Migrant Workers.

Here is a check you can run tonight, free, in about a minute. The DMW publishes a live directory of licensed overseas recruitment agencies, searchable by name and downloadable, showing each agency's status — Valid License, Valid License - Provisional, Expired, Ceased Operations — with address and contact details; on 14 August 2026 it listed 3,793 agency records. Search the agency's exact name. An agency that does not appear, or appears without a valid licence, is not authorised to recruit you.

Card showing who may lawfully charge a Filipino worker bound for the UK: the sponsor's own costs, the Great Britain agency ban, and a DMW-licensed agency's conditions.

Under the 2016 POEA Rules, a licensed agency may charge a placement fee only after you have signed the approved contract, and it must issue a BIR-registered receipt showing the date and the exact amount. Domestic workers pay no placement fee at all. You may lawfully be asked to carry certain documentation costs — passport, NBI, police and barangay clearances, PSA birth certificate, transcript and diploma, professional licence, TESDA certificate, the DOH-prescribed medical, and PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and SSS membership. And the familiar cap is one month of the basic salary stated in the approved contract. DMW issued replacement rules in 2023 — Department Circular No. 01, s. 2023 — so confirm the current cap with the DMW before you pay anything.

Direct hiring by a foreign employer is banned under Article 18 of the Labor Code except for named categories — a short list of the diplomatic corps, international organisations and senior government officials — and professionals and skilled workers with a duly executed verified or authenticated contract on terms above POEA standards, where an employer's first-time hires of such workers must not exceed five, and workers hired by a relative or family member who is a permanent resident of the host country, except domestic workers. It is an exemption from a ban, not an open door. A direct hire's documents are processed through DMW's POPS-Direct online system. DMW states a process cycle time of seven working days for feedback on a clearance request — the agency's published service standard for its own step, not a forecast of how long your case will take. And as published by DMW, an Overseas Employment Certificate is valid for 60 days from issue and can be used once, for a single exit. Before departure the Bureau of Immigration looks for a passport valid at least one year at the time of submission for evaluation, a valid work visa or permit, a verified or authenticated employment contract and a valid OEC, and a worker showing an OEC is exempt from travel tax and airport fee. That comes from a 2022 DMW publication, so follow DMW's current guidance.

The Career Above the First Job

A sponsored role is a rung, not a destination — and the UK rules themselves reward you for treating it that way. Appendix Skilled Worker and GOV.UK's public settlement guide both put settlement — indefinite leave to remain, the term you will meet on the application form and in an HR conversation — at a continuous period of five years in the UK on eligible routes, including Skilled Worker (which covers Health and Care Worker visa holders) and Global Talent, with shorter periods only for a few named routes. That is the rule in force as we write, and it is worth re-checking on GOV.UK, because it is exactly the kind of rule that moves.

Not every route counts toward those five years, so check your own route's GOV.UK page before you build a settlement plan on it.

The rest of the ladder is built the same way the first door was opened: the registration you hold, the specialism you deepen, the evidence you keep. Nobody can promise you where it ends. But the preparation that gets you through the first door is the same preparation that keeps opening the next one.

Before You Apply: The Checklist

☐ Check the occupation code, not the job title, against GOV.UK's eligible-jobs list — and whether it sits on the Immigration Salary List or the Temporary Shortage List.
☐ Confirm the salary against both tests: £41,700 (or your named option) and the going rate for that code.
☐ Verify the agency free on the DMW directory — exact name, valid licence status.
☐ Pay nothing before you have signed the approved contract, and get a BIR-registered receipt for anything you do pay.
☐ Book or plan your English evidence — and if you are a nurse, check whether your NMC-accepted IELTS Academic or OET already covers the visa.
☐ Nurses: start the NMC eligibility application, and gather police clearances for every country you have lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years.
☐ Gather the money proof: £1,270 held 28 days in a row, plus dependant amounts if they apply.
☐ Re-check every fee on GOV.UK and the NMC site before you budget. They are uprated.

The Questions Filipinos Ask Us Most

Can I still go to the UK as a care worker? Not from the Philippines. From 22 July 2025, sponsorship in codes 6135 and 6136 requires the worker to be already in the UK applying for permission to stay, with a narrow in-country route for people already there. It turns on three months already worked for that sponsor in code 6135 or 6136, and that application must be made before 22 July 2028. Someone who already holds Skilled Worker permission in those codes is on a separate limb with no deadline, and may apply for further permission. A Student visa holder must meet a further course-completion test on top. Nursing (2231–2237), nursing auxiliaries and assistants (6131), doctors and social workers are separate codes and are not closed.

How much do I have to be paid? On the general Skilled Worker route, £41,700 or the going rate for your occupation code, whichever is higher. £25,000 is not everyone's number: it belongs to named salary options, not to the general rule. It is not exclusive to the Health and Care Worker visa either — Appendix Skilled Worker's Option K gives £25,000 plus the full going rate to anyone sponsored in a listed health or education occupation in Table 3 or Table 3a of Appendix Skilled Occupations, on the ordinary Skilled Worker route. Lower options from £25,000 to £37,500 exist, each tied to a named category, and the cash figures are uprated — confirm them on GOV.UK.

Do I need to take IELTS? Not necessarily. The visa needs B2 for new applicants from 8 January 2026, and you can prove it by test, by a degree taught in English (a non-UK degree needs an Ecctis assessment), or by an English assessment already accepted by your regulated professional body. The NMC accepts only IELTS Academic or OET, at per-domain scores, and a test is one of three evidence types it accepts.

Can I apply without a job offer? Not on the Skilled Worker route — it is employer-led and needs a certificate of sponsorship from a Home-Office-approved employer. The Graduate route requires you to already be in the UK on a Student visa. Global Talent requires endorsement by an approved body or an eligible prestigious prize.

Can my family come with me? It depends on your route and code. Care workers and senior care workers (6135/6136) may bring dependants only where continuously employed in the UK in those codes since before 11 March 2024, or under the narrow child exceptions, and a parallel restriction applies to medium-skilled occupations not continuously employed since before 22 July 2025. Nurses, doctors and social workers on the Health and Care Worker visa are not caught by that bar. Funds: £285 for a partner, £315 for one child, £200 for each additional child — and these stack on top of your own £1,270, so a family of three shows £1,870. Every amount runs on the same 28-day test, with day 28 within 31 days of that person applying, and the money may be held by you or your partner or child. Confirm the current amounts.

Should I pay a placement fee? Under the 2016 POEA Rules, only a DMW-licensed agency may charge one, only after you have signed the approved contract, and only against a BIR-registered receipt; domestic workers pay none. The one-month-basic-salary cap comes from the same rules, and DMW issued replacement rules in 2023 — Department Circular No. 01, s. 2023 — so confirm the current cap with the DMW. For nurses and the other regulated healthcare professions under the 2021 UK–Philippines MOU, no placement fee, recruitment-agency costs or other fees may be collected from the worker that contravene the applicable laws and the rules and regulations of both countries — verified for those professions only. That is not a blanket rule that a nurse never pays anything: check the current DMW cap named above. A recruitment agency based in Great Britain may not lawfully charge you a work-finding fee.

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