UK ‘becoming less attractive to researchers’, visa data suggest

Skilled worker visa applications from international researchers coming to the UK fell last year, figures obtained from the Home Office show, prompting warnings that the country is becoming less attractive post-Brexit.

The Home Office recorded 1,284 applications and extensions for skilled worker visas from researchers between July and September 2022, according to figures provided in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from the law firm Eversheds Sutherland that were shared with Times Higher Education.

This was a decline of 18 per cent from the same period in 2021, although higher than third-quarter figures for 2020, which came during some of the strictest pandemic travel restrictions.

It means that 5,330 applications were recorded across the 2021-22 academic year – down from 6,291 the year before, although citizens of European Union member states have required a work visa only since 1 January 2021.

The figures might not give the full picture because some researchers can apply via the Global Talent visa route, which is open to a “leader or potential leader” in research.

Nerys Ireland, legal director and specialist in immigration for the education sector at Eversheds Sutherland, said the UK’s absence from the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme – where talks over UK wishes to join as an associated country have been stalled by wider political disputes over the Northern Ireland Protocol but are continuing – has been a factor in the decline in skilled worker visa applications from researchers.

“Whilst the government have agreed to cover Horizon grant applications to the end of March, this has not translated to more researchers being appointed at universities,” she said.

“The number of extensions to grant funding have also declined with many European grants coming to an end this year; as a result, sponsored researchers are not having their visas extended.”

Ms Ireland said her firm’s university clients were reporting that researchers have been choosing other countries over the UK.

The visa figures are a “harbinger that the UK is becoming less attractive to international researchers” post-Brexit because of the disruption of research networks and funding, said Vassiliki Papatsiba, a reader in social sciences at Cardiff University.

The nation’s “reduced centrality” in research “is inevitably affecting the UK’s ability to attract and retain top researchers, who may be less inclined to work in a country that is not part of a broader network of collaboration and innovation”, she added.

Universities UK said that while Horizon negotiations continue, it was vital that the UK remained welcoming to global talent and monitored the number of international staff entering the UK via the skilled worker visa and other routes.

The Home Office said a points-based immigration system is helping the UK attract the best and brightest talent from across the globe.

A spokesperson added: “The Global Talent route successfully granted 2,980 visas in 2022 and has more than doubled since 2019."

The FoI data also revealed that 899 applications were made for skilled worker visas for higher education teaching professionals – covering fellows, lecturers, professors and tutors – in the third quarter of 2022.

This was 5 per cent more than the same period in 2021, and the most for any quarter since at least 2016.

Analysis of data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency by Education Insight suggests that there are staffing gaps caused by reductions in the number of EU academic staff.

Janet Ilieva, founder of the research consultancy firm, said there had been a slight increase in the number of full-time academic staff last year, but the number from the EU peaked in 2018-19 and has been declining ever since.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com