Rejected petition Protect existing Skilled Workers from substantively retrospective changes

The Government should guarantee clear transitional (grandfathering) protection for people already on the Skilled Worker route and their families, so they can complete the five-year route to ILR under the rules in force when they entered, without being affected by substantively retrospective changes.

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Many Skilled Worker visa holders and their families moved to the UK in good faith under the current five-year rules and have built their lives around them. Extending the route to settlement from five to ten years and imposing much higher salary thresholds detached from labour market realities on people already here would, in substance, be retrospective. This would disrupt lives, undermine legal certainty and fairness, and could stop people from reaching ILR after years of lawful residence.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

You may wish to sign the following petition, which calls for similar action: "Do not apply ILR qualifying period changes retrospectively to ILR applicants" https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/751517

You may also be interested in this petition: "Make a law to protect ILR from abolition and retrospective changes" https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/742864

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 19 February 2026
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