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Kingsley Napley’s Medical Negligence Team ‘walks together’ with the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity
Sharon Burkill
We are familiar with change in immigration but even for us, 2024 has been a monumental year.
With the UK Chancellor’s budget announcement tomorrow, many UK businesses will be hoping for some good news on the recruitment front to help alleviate current skills shortages across a range of industries. They are likely to get short shrift. The Government has repeatedly pushed back on requests for sector specific carve-outs to deal with post-Brexit recruitment blocks. Instead, its relentless focus has been on the much more popular and palatable high-skilled immigration, attracting the “brightest and the best” with a focus on innovation, research and technology and the exceptionally talented.
Any sense of a post-Brexit slowdown in UK immigration changes was quickly swept away last week with a thorough spring clean and polish to a wide range of rules. As is commonly the case at this time of year, a statement of changes in the Immigration Rules was released in advance of 6 April when many of the changes will come into force. We set out the main changes below and also include a quick summary of the headlines from the Budget on how new immigration categories aim to assist with the economic recovery.
EU free movement rules ended for the UK on December 31 2020. As a result, recruiting an EU citizen who is not already living in the UK now involves a visa application.
Dramatic changes to our immigration system are taking effect. A new points-based system kicked in on 1 December 2020 affecting businesses wishing to employ non-EU citizens which will also apply to EU citizens (including from the EEA and Switzerland) when freedom of movement ceases on 1 January 2021. So, how can employers prepare for the new changes?
Sharon Burkill
Natalie Cohen
Caroline Sheldon
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