In February 2025, the UK government announced the Seasonal Worker Scheme would be extended for a further five years.
The scheme has existed since 2019. Every year it sees tens of thousands of people working on Britain’s farms or poultry factories – businesses that would not be able to operate without migrant workers since Britain left the EU. The scheme has been expanded several times in the intervening years, from 2,500 workers in the initial pilot to 45,000 in 2025.
This latest extension was widely seen as an attempt by the Labour government to placate farmers amid a highly politicised protest over inheritance taxes. When it was announced, the head of the National Farmers Union said the five-year commitment was a “huge relief”.
But not everyone was happy.
For years, advocates and workers have spoken out about exploitation and abuse under the scheme. They’ve campaigned for significant reforms, arguing exploitation is built into the scheme’s design. High and opaque costs to the worker, visa time-limitations and restricted work options make people vulnerable to abuse in British fields.
“Workers on the scheme travel to the UK to support our horticultural industry and make sure that food goes from the fields to our shelves,” said Kate Roberts, head of policy at Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX). “Many leave jobs, family and take on debt during the migration process. The least we can offer these workers is the work they were promised.”
Despite dogged attempts to engage the government on the issue, almost none of the problems with the scheme have been addressed. Instead, the government has chosen to apply the scheme to ever more people, increasing the pool of workers it is making vulnerable through its immigration policies.
“More than five years after the Seasonal Worker visa scheme was piloted in the UK, a fundamental overhaul to address these structural issues is overdue,” Roberts said.
Expectation vs reality
Many workers say they arrived in the UK to find a radically different working environment to what they were expecting.
David* is from Central Asia. After he lost his job in his home country, he was recruited to work on a British produce farm in 2024.
“At first when I came here, it was very interesting. It was a new country, new experience for me,” he said. But the novelty quickly wore off. “We were very tired. You’re just working and standing, like robots.” Speaking over the phone, he said he worked 12 hours a day, six days a week and was regularly made to work on rest days as well.
Moreover, a culture of bullying, overwork and racist abuse pervaded David’s work on the farm. He said Central Asian colleagues were discriminated against, often made to clean for hours after their shifts had finished while other workers simply clocked off.
During Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day, David asked if he and his colleagues could be allowed a short break after sundown to eat. “Fuck your Eid Mubarak” was the response, David said.
Workers are often intimidated out of filing complaints
When David asked to be transferred to another producer, he was told he would have to wait months before that would be possible. Given that his visa was tied to the scheme operator which recruited and sponsored him, there was little he could do but wait. In the end there was no transfer, his original contract ended and he returned home. “They don’t care how we’re working, how we’re living,” David said.
Under the scheme, workers like David are recruited by approved scheme operators, who in turn often rely on local recruiting agents in workers’ home countries. The scheme operators – of which there are six for horticulture in the UK – sponsor the workers’ visas and serve as intermediaries, placing workers with British farms and food producers.
Workers can legally request a transfer if they are unhappy with their conditions. The scheme operators are, in turn, expected to do their best to accommodate the request, including providing a “clear employer transfer pathway”.
Abuse as part of a day’s work
Margarita Permonaite, a worker engagement officer at the Worker Support Centre (WSC) in Scotland, said it is common for scheme operators not to respond to complaints or requests for transfer. “The same issues persist again and again,” she said.
These issues, furthermore, are underreported. Permonaite said workers are often intimidated out of filing complaints. They fear reprisal and dismissal by their employers or sponsors, which could quickly lead to loss of legal status and potential deportation. This de facto inability to lodge complaints has been noted in the government’s own data from surveys of the scheme.
Although subsequent UK governments have cited surveys showing most seasonal worker visa holders are happy with the scheme, complaints to the Worker Support Centre are increasing – almost 700 were lodged in 2024, up from 405 in 2023. The issues reported include non-payment of wages, unfair dismissals, unsafe accommodation and workplace injuries, physical or verbal abuse and problems with transfers.
One recurring issue, says Permonaite, is substandard accommodation. Workers often sleep in caravans or shipping containers, which are not regulated to the same standards as regular housing in the UK.
Another is a limited ability to access healthcare. Workers have the right to access primary healthcare from the country’s National Health Service (as well as secondary care in Scotland) and are entitled to statutory sick pay. In practice, many workers told FLEX that they had either been denied sick pay or did not know they were entitled to it.
FLEX also found that some workers had either been prevented by their employer from taking time off to see a doctor, or were unable to access transportation for it (an issue compounded by many farms being in isolated locations).
David recounted injuring his leg on the job one day. According to him, the boss said, “You’re a man. Change your shoes and get back to work.”
David’s story is hardly an outlier. Julia*, from South America, who picked fruit for a supplier to major UK supermarket chains, said the managers where she worked took complaints about conditions “very personally”. Reprisals were common, often in the form of reduced hours or being assigned to the most difficult or degrading jobs.
Julia said cruel treatment was the norm. “We were screamed at all the time. They treated us like animals.”
Aida*, who also comes from South America and worked on farms operated by the same supplier, agreed. Every day, “I had to prepare myself mentally, because I knew I was going to be shouted at, knew I was going to be mistreated.” The abuse, both said, often had racist overtones. “Fucking Latins” was a phrase Aida said she heard often.
Tied to sponsors, tied to debt
Costs are a significant problem with the Seasonal Worker Scheme. While workers do not pay the scheme operators, they do have to pay for their visa, travel to the UK, accommodation on the farms, and myriad other surprise costs. This can lead to debt bondage, where workers labour to pay off the debts they have accrued. Debt significantly raises the stakes of unfair dismissal, as going home too early means returning with limited means to pay it off.
To combat this, workers’ rights NGOs are advocating for an ‘employer pays principle’ which, while not a panacea for all the problems with the scheme, would at least see employers bear the costs of visas and travel. UK producers have expressed concern over how that might affect their profits.
Seasonal work visas also come with other strings that undermine workers. Apart from the costs and being tied to scheme operators, they are also short-term and non-renewable. This keeps workers in a state of legal precarity and prevents them from gaining a long-term status that would allow them to pursue redress against abuse. The short-term visa also means they have limited protection under unfair dismissal regulations, which typically don’t apply until two years of employment.
By bringing individuals in on a permanently rotating, six-month system, their presence in the UK is not noted in immigration statistics
Caroline Robinson, Executive Director of The Worker Support Centre in Scotland, said her organisation saw numerous examples of precarity being used to exploit people over the summer.
“Some employers continuously take advantage of the fact that workers’ movement is restricted and options are limited,” Robinson said. “Many workers have reported retaliation for raising issues. Instead of driving up standards, this creates a race to the bottom that is deeply damaging to employers and workers alike.”
These visa limitations do offer one advantage to the government, however. In the UK, someone is only counted in the ‘net migration’ figure if they stay for a year or more. Even though workers are used all year round, by bringing individuals in on a permanently rotating, six-month system, their presence in the UK is not noted in the statistics – a convenient loophole within a highly politicised sector.
“When we ask workers to migrate to the UK, we need to recognise that we are inviting people with lives and commitments,” said FLEX’s Roberts. “Such short-term visas inevitably commodify people. They create a two-tier workforce.”
The ghost workers of the UK
Seasonal workers have not only been made invisible within net migration statistics. Many workers say labour inspections often overlook them and have little insight into what happens to them on British farms.
In theory, there are meant to be regular inspections of worker conditions by the government. But a 2024 report from the government advisory body the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) notes that in practice the system is fractured, with different responsibilities divided unclearly between agencies. UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) – part of the Home Office – is charged with carrying out inspections, but reported only visiting a quarter of farms in 2023, despite seeing an increase in staffing following a review in 2022. None of the workers spoken to for this article said they ever saw such inspections.
Lucila Granada
The MAC report also notes NGOs’ concerns that having inspections done by the same agency that enforces immigration rules could mean migrant workers are scared to talk to them.
At the same time, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the UK’s labour exploitation watchdog, does not have inspection powers itself unless a concern is directly raised, or they are accompanying UKVI inspectors.
This fractured system means the Home Office delegates part of the responsibility for compliance and ensuring conditions to scheme operators. But operators are ultimately paid by producers for the supply of labour, which advocates say creates a conflict of interest. Many people spoken to for this article say they believe the operators are more interested in keeping the food producers happy than workers’ welfare.
Jan-Willem Naerebout, the founder and director of scheme operator AGRI-HR, vehemently disagrees with this characterisation: “Why would we risk our license of 7,000 people in favour of a farmer (who contracts) just 50 workers?”
While Naerebout acknowledged the reports of problems, he says they are not representative of the scheme overall. He believes the scheme is improving “year on year.”
“People come back to us because they tell us that they trust us,” he said. He described the various channels for complaints his company maintains, and pointed out that his visa sponsor license – which his business model relies on – can be revoked at any time if negligence or abuse are uncovered. This has happened to two other operators.
“I don’t know of any other immigration scheme, in any country, which has this number of processes, procedures and safeguarding measures,” Naerebout said. “I think it’s also just good business to do the right thing. I just don’t see the scenario where it’s beneficial to be exploitative.”
Is new legislation a fix?
There is some hope that the Employment Rights Bill, currently going through UK parliament, will improve conditions for seasonal workers. Among its many provisions, it would introduce a protection against unfair dismissal from the first day of employment. This would ensure that seasonal workers would be more, though not fully, protected from unfair dismissal. It would also tighten the rules around guaranteed hours and force employers to provide better warning and compensation for shift cancellations.
The scheme has proved so popular with farmers that other sectors such as fisheries are reported to be lobbying the government for access to it as well
Despite these improvements, Roberts from FLEX says that without corresponding changes to immigration rules, the bill “won’t do much” for seasonal workers. In their current state, she said, the rules are essentially incompatible with Labour’s commitment to improving labour standards.
“There will still be the concern that a complaint against an employer could lead to the worker losing their immigration status as well as work,” Roberts explained. “At minimum, a UK Workplace Justice Visa, or ‘bridging’ visa could give workers an option to make a complaint while still being able to work [elsewhere] and support themselves.”
On top of bridging visas, advocates like the Worker Support Centre and FLEX – which recently released a blueprint to address issues with the scheme – say visas should be made renewable and not tied to their operator. This would allow workers the freedom to move employer or lodge complaints without fear of deportation. If a worker complains and then loses their job, other visa options should be made available so they have the time to seek proper redress. Minimum income guarantees would also help secure a worker’s situation at times when there is little work available.
“Ultimately workers and employers both need to know that the workers have the option to withdraw their labour and find another job, and won’t lose their immigration status or risk destitution if they are unable to work,” Roberts said.
More pain ahead for migrant workers
It does not appear likely the seasonal worker scheme will be amended in any hurry. Various people spoken to for this article say efforts to engage the UK government have been to no avail, though Robinson said the devolved Scottish government has worked closely with her organisation.
Responding to allegations of debt bondage and misleading and precarious conditions put to them last year by the news outlet InfoMigrants, the Home Office said, "the welfare of visa holders is of paramount importance and we are clamping down on poor working conditions and exploitation.”
The scheme has proved so popular with farmers, who lost access to their EU workforce with Brexit, that other sectors such as fisheries are reported to be lobbying the government for access to it as well. This means there is a risk the exploitation found in agriculture may soon spread to other industries if concerns are not addressed.
“Unless we review the risks in this scheme and reform it based on evidence from workers, we will embed the problems that come with it in other labour sectors,” Robinson said.
*Workers’ names have been changed to protect their identities
