Companies Hiring Nurses in the UK With Visa Sponsorship

Before you look for companies hiring nurses in the UK, there is one thing worth getting right, because getting it wrong costs a family of four GBP 20,700. Nurses qualify for a visa that is exempt from the immigration health surcharge entirely, and a great many apply on the general route instead.

Sort that out first. Then the employer list, which is published free by the Home Office and is better used as a prospect list than as a check.

Table of Contents

The two routes, and why one costs GBP 20,700 more

	Health and Care Worker visa	General Skilled Worker
Application fee, up to 3 years	GBP 324	Around GBP 950
Application fee, over 3 years	GBP 628	Around GBP 1,900
Health surcharge	Exempt, dependants included	GBP 1,035 per person per year
Salary floor	GBP 25,000 on a national pay scale, or GBP 31,300 otherwise	GBP 41,700

The same nurse, the same job, two routes.

Work the surcharge through. A family of four on a five-year visa pays GBP 1,035 x 4 x 5, which is GBP 20,700, on the general route and nothing on the health route. Add a salary floor GBP 16,700 lower and it is not a close comparison.

One condition decides eligibility, and it is about the employer rather than about you: your sponsor must be an NHS body, an organisation providing services to the NHS, or a provider regulated by the Care Quality Commission. A private clinic outside that definition cannot use this route even to hire a nurse. Full comparison in Health and Care visa vs Skilled Worker visa.

Nurses were never affected by the care worker closure

Worth saying plainly, because a great deal of coverage has left registered nurses believing the UK is closed to them.

On 22 July 2025 the UK closed the care worker and senior care worker occupations to new overseas applicants. Nurses, doctors and allied health professionals were never in scope. The Health and Care Worker visa remains fully open to them, and anyone telling a registered nurse otherwise is wrong.

If you hold a nursing qualification you have never registered, that registration is the highest-value thing you can do. It moves you from a closed route to an open, cheaper one. See what is actually open to care workers.

Where to find the employers

There is no need for a curated list, because the Home Office publishes the definitive one. The register of licensed sponsors is free and downloadable, and it holds around 100,000 entries.

Two ways to use it, and the second is the one most people miss:

Defensively. If an employer is not on the register they cannot sponsor you, whatever they have told you. One minute, and it eliminates every fake offer.
As a prospect list. Filter it to healthcare and to your region, then approach those employers directly whether or not they are advertising. They hold a licence, they have done the paperwork before, and they have already decided sponsoring is worth it.

For nursing specifically the pool is wider than NHS trusts: independent hospital groups, care groups regulated by the CQC, agencies supplying NHS services, hospices and community providers all appear. We keep a working copy at registered UK visa sponsors.

NMC registration is the long pole, not the visa

The visa is the fast part. Registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council is the slow one, it runs on its own timetable, and no employer can hire you until it is done or under way.

Start it before you start job hunting, not after an offer. That single sequencing decision is the difference between a move measured in months and one measured in a year.

One piece of good news on language. The English requirement rose to CEFR B2 for applications made on or after 8 January 2026, but OET Grade B or IELTS Academic 7.0, which the NMC typically requires anyway, sits comfortably above the visa threshold. Meet your regulator’s standard and you have already cleared the immigration one.

What to do, in order

Start NMC registration now. Everything else waits for it.
Confirm the employer qualifies for the health route: NHS body, NHS service provider, or CQC regulated.
Check they are on the register of licensed sponsors.
Apply on the Health and Care Worker visa, not the general route. This is the GBP 20,700 decision.
Use your OET or IELTS result for both the NMC and the visa rather than sitting a separate test.
Never pay for a job offer. Healthcare recruitment is one of the three sectors where placement fraud concentrates.

Last checked September 2026. Fees and the health surcharge are revised most Aprils and the English requirement changed on 8 January 2026. NMC registration requirements are set by the regulator and change independently of visa rules.

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