Can the five-year period for permanent residency be recalculated when changing employers with a work permit? Being unpaid for more than four weeks is even more dangerous.

Have worked for a company for five years, or changed three companies within five years. On the day of submitting the permanent residency application, Home Office, is it the same thing?

The rules give a straightforward answer. The permanent residency clause of Appendix Skilled Worker requires a "five-year continuous period consisting of licenses from designated routes," and the following can be combined: Skilled Worker, Tier 2 (General), Global Talent, Innovator Founder, Scale-up, T2 Religious Workers, and International Athletes (the complete list is subject to the rules). There is not a single word requiring the same sponsor. Changing employers will not reset the five years.

The actual reason for pushing the five-year mark back is the gap between licenses and the few weeks when salary is stopped. At that time, you are still in the UK, and the eVisa page is likely still showing as valid, so almost no one takes it seriously.

Can the five years of permanent residency be connected during the weeks of changing employers?

Appendix Continuous Residence treats "whether it has been interrupted" and "whether it is long enough" as two separate issues. CR 4.1(d) deals with the former: if on any day you have neither a valid permit nor fall into those very narrow exceptions, the continuous period is broken. CR 4.2 deals with the latter: even if the exceptions save the continuity, the time without a permit still does not count towards the qualifying period. The combined effect of the two is that the visa is not obtained for free, but your five-year period is shifted overall, counting days as they are.

The risk of changing jobs has never been in "changing," but in "having a few days in between."

The standard procedure for changing employers within the country is: the new employer assigns CoS, and you submit the change of employment application before the expiration date of the old permit. Submitting this application is the key to the entire process. Under Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971, the permit will automatically be extended until a decision is made after the old permit expires. This waiting period still retains the characteristics of the original route and is counted as usual towards the five-year requirement. The prerequisite is that the old permit is still valid when submitted. It cannot be even one day late.

The third row is the most error-prone section now. The statement "once the application is submitted, you can start working at the new company" was indeed valid around 2021. At that time, Home Office provided a special exception during the pandemic: CoS was assigned before January 19, 2021 (medical and care categories were relaxed until October 4, 2022), and the application was submitted before the original visa expired, allowing people to start working while waiting for the decision. This window has long closed. The current guidance from the sponsor is that the new sponsor must not allow someone to start working before Home Office is approved, and there is no alternative mechanism allowing "starting work during the pending period."

Those weeks when the salary was stopped were much more troublesome than changing jobs.

There is one guideline in the guarantor's guide that few have read: if a guaranteed employee has unpaid or reduced salary absence for more than 4 weeks in a calendar year (January 1 to December 31), unless it falls into an exception, the guarantor must stop the guarantee. Two words need to be highlighted, "cumulative" and "reduced salary." Taking three separate unpaid leave of 10 days each, and taking a continuous 30-day leave, are the same thing under this rule; the period during which the salary drops from full pay to statutory sick pay (SSP) is also counted within these 4 weeks.

There are exceptions, which are explicitly listed: statutory maternity leave, paternity leave, shared parenting leave, adoption leave, sick leave, as well as situations such as legally organized strikes and assistance in responding to national or international humanitarian crises. In these cases, the salary is below the threshold and does not constitute a reason for stopping the guarantee, but the guarantor must still report salary changes via SMS.

In the April 2026 edition of "Workers and Temporary Workers: sponsor a skilled worker", an additional paragraph has been added: Unpaid absence that does not fall under the above exceptions but is due to compelling or exceptional circumstances may exceed four weeks, provided that the sponsor reports the duration and reason for the absence to UKVI through SMS's "Report migrant activity" at their discretion. The key to initiating this process lies with the employer; employees cannot do it themselves.

The subsequent chain is where the permanent residency is actually harmed. After the guarantor stops the guarantee and revokes CoS, Home Office will initiate curtailment. In practice, it usually gives you 60 days or until the original permit expires (whichever comes first) to find a new guarantor, switch to another route, or leave the country. However, this is neither a right nor a convention; the number of days given depends on the remaining length of your permit at the time the decision is made. If you don't obtain a new permit within 60 days, you will fall into a period without a permit: those dozens of days are not counted towards the five years, and in serious cases, the continuous period will be broken off here, and the five years must be recalculated from the new permit. The gap on your payslips and PAYE records will also be brought up by the case officer when you apply for permanent residency, asking where you were and what your employment status was during those months.

My judgment is: , the arrangement of salary suspension and leave of absence, should not be accepted by a work permit holder . Paid job transfer, reduced salary with shortened working hours, and taking statutory holidays, three options are safer than "stop paying salary for several months and deal with it later," because the first three only trigger the reporting obligation, while the last one triggers the obligation to stop the sponsorship. Similarly, when changing jobs, even if the new employer urges you to start on the first day of the month, you should still set the start date after approval - the cost of delaying three weeks to join is far less than pushing back the entire five-year period, let alone starting over.

There are only two things I can do today. Find the expiration date of the old permit eVisa, write it on the calendar, and set a reminder 30 days before that date, which is the last safe line to submit the change of employment; then recall whether I have had any unpaid or reduced salary days since January 1st this year, add up the number of days, and if it exceeds 20 days, I should ask the employer whether they have reported according to regulations.

These rules change every year, this article is for reference only, please consult a licensed lawyer for specific cases.

[Data Source] GOV.UK "Immigration Rules Appendix Continuous Residence"; GOV.UK "Immigration Rules Appendix Skilled Worker"; Home Office "Workers and Temporary Workers: sponsor a skilled worker" April 2026 edition

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