Will the 5-year permanent residency be recalculated when changing employers on a work permit? Unpaid leave of more than 4 weeks is even more dangerous.

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

The rules give a straightforward answer. The permanent residency clause for Appendix Skilled Worker requires "a five-year continuous period consisting of visas on a specified route," which can be combined, including 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 throughout. Changing employers will not reset the five years.

The period that actually pushes the five-year mark back is the gap between licenses and the few weeks when salary is stopped. At the time these two events occur, 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 is 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 toward 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 be automatically 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 normally towards the five years. The prerequisite is that the old permit is still valid when submitted. Even one day late is not allowed.

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 (for medical and care categories, it was extended to 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 new sponsor is that the person cannot start working before Home Office is approved, and there is no alternative mechanism allowing you to "start working during the pending period."

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

There is one clause in the guarantor guidelines that few people read: if a guaranteed employee has unpaid or reduced-pay absence totaling more than 4 weeks within a calendar year (January 1 to December 31), the guarantor must stop the guarantee, unless it falls into an exception. The two words to highlight are "total" and "reduced-pay". Taking three separate 10-day unpaid leaves, and taking one continuous 30-day leave, are considered the same under this rule; the period during which the salary drops from full pay to statutory sick pay (SSP) is also counted toward these 4 weeks.

There are exceptions, which are explicitly listed: statutory maternity leave, paternity leave, shared parental leave, adoption leave, sick leave, and situations such as legally organized strikes or 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.

The April 2026 edition of "Workers and Temporary Workers: sponsor a skilled worker" adds a new paragraph: 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 via SMS "Report migrant activity" at their discretion. The key to initiating this process is in the hands of the employer; employees cannot do it themselves.

The subsequent chain is where the permanent residency is damaged. After the guarantor stops the guarantee and cancels CoS, Home Office will initiate curtailment. In practice, usually 60 days or until the original permit expires (whichever comes first) is given to you to find a new guarantor, transfer 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 here, and the five years will have to be recalculated from the new permit. The gap on your payslips and PAYE records will also be compared with your immigration history by the case officer when you apply for permanent residency, asking where you were during those months and what your employment status was.

My judgment is: , the arrangement of salary suspension and leave of absence, should not be accepted by a work permit holder . Paid transfer, reduced salary with shortened working hours, and taking statutory holidays, these three options are safer than "stopping salary for a few months and dealing with it later," because the former 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 delay the start date until after approval is granted - the cost of delaying employment by three weeks is far less than pushing back the entire five-year mark, let alone starting over.

There are only two things I can do today. Retrieve the expiration date of the old permit eVisa, write it on the calendar, set a reminder 30 days before, which is the last safe line to submit the change of employment; then recall whether I have taken any unpaid or reduced salary days since January 1st of 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 attorney 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

Dealing with a UK legal matter? JustiScript can help