Will the five-year permanent residency period be reset when changing employers on 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 applying for permanent residency, does Home Office look at the same thing?

The rules' answers are straightforward. The permanent residency clause for Appendix Skilled Worker requires a "five-year continuous period consisting of licenses through designated routes," 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. 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 the salary is stopped. When these two things happen, 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 continuous when changing employers?

Appendix Continuous Residence treats "whether it's interrupted" and "whether it's long enough" as two separate issues. CR 4.1(d) deals with the former: if on any day you have neither a valid permission 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 permission 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 the application is the key step. 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 as usual towards the five years. The prerequisite is that the old permit is still valid when submitted. Even a day late is not allowed.

The third line is the most error-prone section. 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 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 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 you to "start working during the pending period."

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

There is one guideline in the guarantor's guide that not many people have 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. Two words need to be highlighted: "total" and "reduced-pay". Taking three separate unpaid leaves of 10 days each, and taking one continuous unpaid leave of 30 days are the same thing under this rule; the period during which the salary drops from full pay to the statutory sick pay (SSP) is also counted toward these 4 weeks.

There are exceptions, and they are explicitly listed: statutory maternity leave, paternity leave, shared parenting 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.

In the April 2026 edition of "Workers and Temporary Workers: sponsor a skilled worker," an additional paragraph has been added: Unpaid absences that do not fall under the above exceptions but are 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 initiate it themselves.

The subsequent chain is where the permanent residency is actually harmed. 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, switch to another route, or leave. However, this is neither a right nor a practice; the number of days 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 in the five years, and in serious cases, the continuous period will be broken here, and the five years must be recalculated from the new permit. The gap on the payslip and PAYE records will also be brought up by the case officer when you apply for permanent residency, to cross-check your immigration history and ask where you were during those months and what your employment status was.

My judgment is: , this kind of arrangement, a work permit holder should not accept . Paid job transfer, reduced salary with shortened working hours, taking statutory leave, three options are safer than "stop salary for several months first, then 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 of the month, you should still delay the start date until after approval is granted -- the cost of delaying the start date 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. 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 ever taken any unpaid or reduced pay 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 attorney for specific cases.

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

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