The Immpact team has warned that there is a high chance of employers using the wrong salary rate for overseas talent, after its investigation found 77 errors within 33 job codes in the Home Office’s Immigration Rules. The current version of the Rules, published in April 2024, is not due to be updated until later in the year.
In the meantime, Immpact representatives say “these errors could prove extremely costly for businesses, and have other serious consequences.” One of the errors required a sponsor to pay nearly £20,000 above the corrected rate.
Speaking to HR magazine, Jonathan Beech, Immpact’s managing director, stated: “Employers of overseas workers must use the figures outlined within the latest guidance, and not the Rules, until they are updated in the autumn. The guidance can be found here.
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“It is important to note that the UK Visas and Immigration guidance, released in July, concentrates on the ‘going rate’ for each occupation. There are other salary parameters to be aware of as well (eg the threshold and hourly rate). Additional support can be found via the gov.uk website.”
The Immpact team uncovered the errors as part of its routine testing, after which it manually compared every code in the new guidance table against those in the Rules table.
The Home Office stated, over the past week: “The Immigration Rules changes in April 2024 contained a number of errors where the going rates stated for occupation codes were too high. Guidance on gov.uk has been updated with the correct, lower rates and the Immigration Rules will be corrected in the autumn.”
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Writing for HR magazine in April 2024, Vanessa Ganguin, managing partner at Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law, stated: “Hiring someone on a skilled worker visa now means paying more than half of what all workers in that profession earn.
“For new applications, the general minimum salary threshold increased from £26,200 to £38,700 gross per annum, the hourly rate from £10.75 to £15.88 and the government-set ‘going rate’ for occupations increased from the 25th percentile of those jobs, according to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, to the 50th percentile (median). Sponsors must pay the higher of these three figures.”
