UK immigration reforms welcome top talent, but startups need more
While the UK’s Immigration White Paper introduces positive reforms for attracting top tech talent, restrictive visa changes risk excluding the essential mid-level workforce startups need to thrive, says Bella Rhodes
Over a third – 39 per cent – of the UK’s fastest-growing start-ups have an immigrant co-founder, a stat clearly recognised by the government, whose Immigration White Paper published yesterday places a welcome emphasis on attracting exceptional talent. So while the overall message from the Prime Minister may be one of restriction, control and reduction – the detail relevant to tech startups and founders is surprisingly positive. The question now is can this detail cut through the wall of noisy, tough rhetoric.
On the plus side, the paper signals positive moves to reduce red tape, reform the Innovator Founder visa to make it more accessible to international graduates, and double the number of qualifying institutions under the High Potential Individual (HPI) route – a policy we at Startup Coalition have long advocated for. Even the graduate visa, while restricted, has survived.
But exceptional and entrepreneurial talent is just the tip of the iceberg.
If we succeed in attracting more startup founders, AI researchers and innovators to the UK, demand for experienced, mid-level talent to support the building out of these businesses and innovations will rise – and fast. These are the software engineers, experienced product managers and GTM teams who turn vision into delivery. They’re not straight out of university, and they’re not necessarily top of their field (yet). But they are the people who keep fast-growing companies running.
Unfortunately, this is where the system starts to fall apart.
Recent changes to the skilled worker visa are making it harder for mid-career professionals to qualify. These challenges didn’t begin with this White Paper: the previous government initiated many of them, but it doubles down.
Critically, the government is raising the required skill level for work visas from RQF Level 3 back to RQF Level 6, eliminating access for around 180 occupations. That may sound technical, but in practice it could mean excluding a wide range of roles that growing startups rely on – from technical support and customer success to many junior engineering and operations roles.
At the same time, the salary thresholds for skilled worker visas are rising – which is particularly damaging for startups, where compensation often includes equity and roles may not meet headline salary criteria. Add to this the 32 per cent increase in the Immigration Skills Charge – a flat fee paid per sponsored employee – and early stage companies risk being priced out of the system.
The missing middle of UK immigration policy
This is the “missing middle” of UK immigration policy. While we now have clear pathways for recent graduates and top-tier global talent, mid-career professionals are increasingly being squeezed out. If left unchecked, this creates a real risk: that we succeed in attracting brilliant founders to the UK, only to leave them without the talent they need to grow.
To its credit, the White Paper proposes the development of sector-led workforce strategies, designed to ensure industries invest in domestic skills. The recognition that this requires effective partnership with employers is encouraging. But startups aren’t like large corporates – they don’t have the time or resources to run comprehensive in-house training programmes. Nor can they wait five to ten years for the domestic skills pipeline to catch up.
In other words, we need to build a system that supports short-term hiring needs while investing in long-term domestic capability. That starts by ensuring the Skilled Worker visa remains viable and accessible for smaller firms. A differentiated approach to costs, such as capping the costs for innovative early-stage startups, would be a meaningful first step.
But all this detail will only matter if the message embedded in the White Paper that the UK remains open to tech talent cuts through. At the moment, the biggest risk is that the policy itself gets lost in the headline message that our drawbridge is going up. That might score the right political points, but for the firms that drive Britain’s growth, it may turn out to be the message their candidates least want to hear.
Bella Rhodes is talent policy lead at the Startup Coalition