UK Allows Asylum-Seeking Doctors and Nurses to Work After 12 Months Waiting Period. Health workers who are seeking asylum can now work in the NHS.
Starting today, asylum-seeking doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who are certified will be able to work in the UK after a year.
The move, which is explained in the Spring Statement of Changes, gives asylum seekers who have been waiting for a year or more for their first asylum decision the ability to work again.
As of today, asylum seekers who were allowed to work could only do jobs on the Immigration Salary List, which was created in April 2024 by the previous UK government. Most health professionals are not on this list.
As of today, March 26, asylum seekers who have been waiting for 12 months or more will be able to work in any job that is included in Appendix Skilled Occupations at Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) level 6 (graduate level) or higher.
This comprises a wide spectrum of highly skilled jobs in various fields. The NHS’s list of health jobs that qualify at RQF6 and above includes:
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Dentists
- Pharmacists
- Professionals in allied health
- Health services and managers of public health
- Table 3 of Appendix Skilled Occupations lists specialist health roles.
Employers will still need to do routine checks to see if someone has the right to work.
Two specialist doctors, one a radiologist and the other a neuro-rehabilitation specialist, filed a lawsuit in the high court in April 2025. They were qualified to work for the NHS but were not allowed to. The NHS-funded Refugee and Asylum Seekers Centre for Healthcare Professionals Education (Reache) helped the two doctors stay competent while they couldn’t work.
Last December, the high court hearing was put on hold because home secretary Shabana Mahmood promised to do an urgent review. This resulted to a change in the policy.
Dr. Aisha Awan, a GP and senior clinical lecturer at the University of Manchester, and director of Reache, stated that wars and other global events have caused a lot of people to move. He remarked, “We need to do something about the fact that doctors, nurses, and other health professionals are losing their skills, which is a huge loss for humanity.” This is in addition to the fact that it is bad for the economy, hurts the NHS’s ability to hire more staff, and has a detrimental effect on mental health and integration.
Becky Hart, a lawyer at Bhatt Murphy who represented the two doctors, said that the case showed how “nonsensical and harmful it is for both the individuals and society to ban work for people seeking asylum who want to work.”
The high court challenge said that the use of the ISL for people seeking asylum was unfair and unreasonable because the list was not made for people seeking asylum but for the overseas Skilled Worker route, and the Migration Advisory Committee had made it clear that it was not appropriate for this group.
Objective proof
The challenge also said that the Home Office’s reason for employing the ISL—to stop illegal and dangerous crossings to the UK—had no objective evidence to back it up. It noted that the UK had a very rigorous policy on the right to work, but the evidence demonstrates that it doesn’t affect people’s choice of which nation to seek asylum in. It kept people dependent on asylum handouts and took away workers who could have helped the NHS.
The two doctors also said that the policy went against the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects human rights, and that the Home Office had broken the Public Sector Equality Duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 by not thinking about how the policy might affect protected groups like women and people with disabilities whose mental health is affected by not being able to work.
No limits
Bhatt Murphy Solicitors told Garden Court chambers that the government should do more. It said that the “repeated recommendations of the Migration Advisory Committee” that asylum seekers should not be limited in the employment they can do once they are able to work should be taken seriously and put into action right away.
“The case for doing so is clear, given the clear evidence that the asylum work policy does not act as a pull factor and the clear benefits of allowing asylum seekers to work.”