Three things driving the week: the Employment Rights Act's April payroll deadline is closing fast, CQC's local authority assessment regime is throwing up its first damning verdicts, and the overseas recruitment pipeline that kept the sector afloat through the vacancy crisis has now formally collapsed. Each one lands on providers differently — taken together, they describe a sector being asked to do more with a workforce that is getting harder and more expensive to staff.
EMPLOYMENT LAW
SSP Day One is Three Weeks Away. Most Providers Are Not Ready.
From 6 April, statutory sick pay applies from the first day of absence — and the lower earnings limit disappears entirely.
What is changing
The Employment Rights Act 2025 rewrites the Statutory Sick Pay rules with effect from 6 April 2026. Two changes apply simultaneously. First, the three-day waiting period is abolished: employees who are off sick will be entitled to SSP from day one of their absence, not day four. Second, the lower earnings limit — currently £123 per week — is removed. Any employee, regardless of earnings, will now qualify.
That second change is significant for care. The sector runs on part-time and variable-hours contracts. Many of those workers have historically fallen below the LEL and received no statutory sick pay at all. From April, that changes.
Why this matters
The direct cost per sick day goes up. Under the old rules, a provider with a worker on £150/week who was off for five days faced an SSP liability for days four and five only. From April, that liability runs from day one. Across a workforce with already-elevated sickness absence rates — the sector runs well above the national average — the cumulative cost is meaningful.
The administrative burden also increases. Many providers have not had to track short absences carefully because they generated no SSP liability. That changes. Payroll processes, absence management systems, and line manager training all need reviewing before 6 April.
A consultation on the Fair Pay Agreement Adult Social Care Negotiating Body is also now concluded (closed January 2026), with regulations expected from October 2026 to establish the body formally. That is a slower burn, but the direction of travel is clear: the sector is heading towards a centralised pay negotiation framework, and providers who are not across it will find themselves reacting rather than planning.
What to do
Audit your zero-hours and variable-hours workforce now. Identify everyone currently below the LEL who will newly qualify for SSP from April.
Update payroll configuration before the April pay period runs. Errors in the first cycle are difficult to correct and create compliance exposure.
Brief line managers on absence recording. The trigger point for SSP has changed — informal absence management practice must catch up.
Model the cost impact on a worst-case and expected-case basis and flag to commissioners in upcoming contract discussions.
REGULATION
York Gets ‘Requires Improvement’. Your Commissioner Might Be Next.
CQC's local authority assessment programme is delivering its first formal scores — and the results are sobering for the sector's commissioning base.
What has happened
The Care Quality Commission has published its assessment of City of York Council's adult social care function under the new national assessment framework. The verdict: Requires Improvement, with an overall score of 39% — one point above the threshold for Inadequate. The report identifies significant shortfalls in safeguarding, needs assessment, and continuity of care.
This is one of the first formal inspections and scored outcomes under the CQC's refreshed local authority assessment regime, which the government confirmed will complete its baseline round of reports during 2026-27. Every local authority in England will have a published assessment. York is an early example of what those assessments look like when they go badly.
Why this matters for providers
A commissioner rated Requires Improvement is a commissioner under pressure. That pressure has a direct bearing on providers in several ways.
Fee setting becomes contested territory. The government's local authority priorities framework for 2026-27 explicitly requires councils to set fee rates at sustainable levels — yet an authority under improvement scrutiny is simultaneously trying to demonstrate financial discipline and service improvement. Providers in York and authorities facing similar verdicts should expect fee negotiations to be more fraught, not less.
Placement and referral processes slow down. CQC's criticism of York centred in part on safeguarding and assessment continuity. Where a local authority is restructuring its assessment and care management functions in response to an inspection, the practical effect for providers is delayed referrals, more complex review processes, and slower payment cycles as administrative burden rises internally.
Market stability risk is real. An inadequate or Requires Improvement local authority assessment can trigger closer national oversight. That oversight process consumes local management bandwidth, which further delays the commercial and operational interactions providers depend on.
What to do
Check whether your lead commissioners have had or are due a CQC local authority assessment. The CQC publishes a rolling programme — look up your authority's position.
Flag to your commercial team now if your primary commissioner is under improvement scrutiny. Build that risk into your contract renewal timeline and fee negotiation strategy.
Document your own safeguarding referrals and response times carefully. If a commissioner's assessment cites safeguarding failures, there may be increased CQC scrutiny of providers in that area as a consequence.
WORKFORCE
The International Recruitment Pipeline Has Collapsed. The Numbers Confirm It.
Skilled Worker visas in 2025 fell to their lowest level since before Brexit. The buffer that kept the sector's vacancy rate in check is gone.
What the data shows
New data from the Work Rights Centre confirms that in 2025, just 45,797 Skilled Worker visas were issued to main applicants — the lowest annual total since the UK left the EU. Health, care and science roles saw some of the sharpest declines. The trend has been underway since March 2024, when the government barred international care workers from bringing dependants on their visa, but the 2025 figures mark a significant acceleration of the collapse.
For context: in 2022-23 and 2023-24, the sector drew heavily on international recruitment to drive vacancies down from historic highs. The workforce data from that period showed the strategy working. The pipeline is now effectively closed at the volume that made that possible.
Why this matters
The vacancy buffer is gone. Domestic recruitment has not filled the gap left by reduced international flows. Any provider who built their staffing model around a stable supply of international recruits should treat that model as broken and plan accordingly.
Retention is now the primary lever. The marginal cost of losing an experienced worker is much higher when the replacement market is constrained. That changes the economics of what it is worth spending on retention, flexible working, staff development and pay above minimum wage.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has quantified this in recently published research, warning that persistently low pay in adult social care is generating substantial hidden costs through chronic staff shortages and turnover. The argument that paying above minimum is a cost is increasingly difficult to sustain when the alternative is vacancy carry costs, agency spend and quality risk.
What to do
Model your current recruitment source mix. What proportion of recent starters came via international routes? Plan for that figure trending toward zero.
Review your retention spend. Exit interview data and voluntary turnover rates should be reviewed quarterly, not annually.
Engage your local college and sixth-form partnerships now. Domestic pipeline development is a medium-term play that takes 12-18 months to show results — providers who start now will be ahead of those who wait for a crisis to force the issue.
Do not assume the visa rules will reverse. Stakeholder pressure is significant, but the government's political positioning on immigration makes a rapid return to high-volume care worker visas unlikely before the next election.
Have a good weekend.
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