More than 1,900 small high street businesses including mini-marts, vape shops and car washes are licensed to sponsor foreign workers under a specialist scheme intended for high-earning individuals, despite visa rules being tightened, BBC Verify has found. The Home Office scheme allows registered employers to recruit workers from overseas who meet a certain skill level, but the rules were tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees earning at least £41,700.
A year on from the rule change, BBC Verify found that more than 1,500 grocery and convenience stores, 150 taxi operators, 100 barber shops, and dozens of car washes and vape shops were still on the register and able to sponsor people to apply for visas. More than 100 of those businesses were added to the skilled worker sponsorship list after the rules were tightened. Being on the register does not mean applications for individual visas would be approved.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered an urgent review into the presence of vape shops, barbers and car washes on the skilled worker sponsor register two months ago, following concerns over the "potential misuse of the system". The Home Office said at the time that any businesses seeking to abuse the system would have their licences revoked.
A Home Office spokesperson said:
"We have raised the skilled worker threshold and over 100 occupations are now ineligible for new skilled worker visas."
It is understood some of the companies that joined the register after the rules changed may have applied before they took effect. Some companies may have also remained on the register because they were approved before July 2025 or are sponsoring workers who were already in the UK.
There are more than 120,000 businesses with licences to sponsor skilled workers. The skilled worker scheme was introduced after Brexit for employers to recruit workers after Eu free movement ended. Smaller firms must pay a £611 fee to apply to join the register while larger businesses, such as those with more than 50 staff, pay a fee of £1,682. Anyone can be visited by the UK Visas and Immigration service during the application process.
Until July last year, someone being hired from abroad could qualify for sponsorship if their qualifications met an A-Level or equivalent standard, as long as they were paid at least £38,700 in most cases. Since the rule change, non-graduate professions, such as shop managers, are no longer eligible to apply. There are also higher English-language skill requirements that were introduced in January this year.
The Home Office said there were 68,067 skilled worker visas granted in the 12 months to March this year - 29,745 to main applicants and 38,322 to their dependants - which is 30% lower than the year before. IT professionals were the most common type of people to be granted the visas, followed by those people working in finance, while the fall in approvals was mostly attributed to those in food preparation and hospitality trades no longer qualifying for the scheme.
Jobs including sales and retail assistants, taxi drivers and chauffeurs are currently listed by the government as ineligible for skilled worker visas, but there are some exemptions, such as bricklayers, carpenters or nursing assistants and other occupations where there is a shortage in the UK.
The Home Office revoked 3,299 licences in 2025 compared with 347 in 2023. Its register does not state how many certificates of sponsorship or visas have been issued for each business or what type of role it has hired for, but Home Office guidance states firms must offer genuine jobs that meet skill and salary rules, and only sponsor workers for eligible roles.
As businesses are only listed by name, it is not always clear what industry a company operates within. BBC Verify identified the more than 1,900 small high-street businesses that had retained a sponsorship licence by matching their names and locations to Companies House records and Google business listings to identify whether the mini marts, car washes and other small operations were on the list.
Around 1,700 of those were in England, more than 140 were in Scotland, over 80 were in Wales and just two were in Northern Ireland.
Separately, BBC Verify found 60 businesses on the register that had been fined for emloying illegal workers between April 2024 and December 2025. They had been fined a combined £2.5m.
A Home Office spokesperson said:
"Illegal working will not be accepted, and businesses who face two or more illegal working penalties of up to £60,000, or fail to pay a penalty the first time, will have their license to hire workers revoked."
Speaking about the visa rule change, Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory, said that if businesses were on the register before the rules changed, they can continue to employ people they had already sponsored.
"But they can't now bring in a new person to do those jobs."
Toby Way, a lawyer at WestBridge Business Immigration which helps businesses apply to be sponsors, told BBC Verify that while most sponsorship approvals are legitimate,
"We come across a lot of exaggeration and some downright lying about sponsored roles"
"Hotels and restaurants have been hit massively by the rule changes. They're now unable to sponsor a chef or a manager, but they might claim they need someone for marketing or book-keeping, because those roles are on the temporary shortage list,"he said.
"We know the Home Office looks at the finances of the businesses now and whether their revenue or profit means they can pay the required salary."
Immigration lawyer Joanna Hunt of DAC Beachcroft said that it would be difficult for a high street shop to justify sponsorship at the degree level.
"Subject to a few exceptions, a job needs to be skilled to 'degree level' to allow a business to sponsor a worker to fill it and the Home Office will consider if the role fits with the type of business the sponsor operates. A high street shop may find this requirement difficult to demonstrate."
Additional reporting by Rob England
