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A caretaker (SOC 6232) is responsible for the security, cleanliness, and basic upkeep of a building — schools, blocks of flats, and commercial premises are the most common settings — and the role can be sponsored under the Skilled Worker route where salary and duties clear the threshold.
The person who keeps a building running
Day to day this covers opening and locking up, basic repairs and minor maintenance, liaising with contractors for bigger jobs, moving furniture and equipment, monitoring heating and alarm systems, and general site security. It's a hands-on, physically active role rather than a management one, and the day-to-day tasks can vary a lot depending on whether the building is a school, a residential estate, or an office block — the sponsoring employer should describe the actual site and duties precisely rather than a generic 'premises maintenance' job spec.
Getting the boundary right matters more than it looks. A role that's mostly cleaning belongs under a cleaning occupation code, and one built around patrols and access control looks more like a security role than a caretaker's. Reusing SOC 6232 because it's the code the employer already has on file, rather than because it genuinely matches the work, is exactly the kind of mismatch that shows up quickly once a caseworker or compliance officer compares the job description against what the worker actually spends their week doing.
Shift patterns, live-in arrangements, and what that means for right to work
Caretaker roles often come with unusual hours — early starts, evening lock-up, on-call weekend cover — and some, particularly in schools or larger residential blocks, come with a tied on-site flat. None of this changes the immigration checks required, but it does change how an employer should document them: a live-in caretaker's right to work check and accommodation arrangement should be recorded separately and clearly, since housing tied to the job can otherwise get muddled with pay when a compliance officer reviews the salary actually received.
Where the employer charges the worker for that tied accommodation, the rules don't allow the housing charge to eat freely into whatever counts as pay towards the salary threshold — only a capped weekly amount can be deducted before the remaining figure is tested against the going rate and salary floor. That cap is reviewed periodically, so it's worth checking the current figure on GOV.UK rather than carrying over a number used for a previous hire. Getting this calculation wrong in either direction — deducting too much for housing, or quietly folding the value of free accommodation into a headline salary that doesn't reflect actual cash pay — leaves a Certificate of Sponsorship resting on a salary figure that wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, a problem that tends to surface later, at renewal or during a site visit, rather than at the point of assignment.
Safeguarding checks that sit alongside sponsorship
A school caretaker will usually need a DBS check as part of the school's own safeguarding policy, on top of standard sponsorship evidence — but it's worth thinking about what happens after day one, not only before it. An enhanced DBS certificate carries no official expiry date, yet many schools and multi-academy trusts run internal renewal cycles of their own, and a caretaker with routine, sometimes out-of-hours, access to occupied buildings is precisely the profile a safeguarding audit will look at closely. Tracking DBS renewal alongside visa expiry and right to work follow-up dates in one place, rather than in two systems that can quietly drift apart, is the kind of thing a smart alerts and reminders setup is built for.
Evidence a caretaker's sponsor should keep
Confirm the role and pay against the published going rate for SOC 6232 and the general salary floor, checking the current figures on GOV.UK's eligible occupations list. A school caretaker will usually need a DBS check as part of the school's own safeguarding policy, on top of standard sponsorship evidence, and whoever assigns the Certificate of Sponsorship should be a clearly recorded Level 1 user — in small organisations this is sometimes the site manager themselves, which is fine as long as the sponsor management system reflects it accurately.
It's also worth checking, every so often rather than only at the point of hire, that the caretaker isn't quietly picking up unrelated duties over time — covering reception, doing general labouring for a linked business, or taking on a second role at another site owned by the same group — without anyone updating the job description or re-checking whether the combined role still matches SOC 6232 and the salary paid for it.
Reporting changes once the caretaker is in post
Caretaker roles change more often than the paperwork suggests: contracted hours get trimmed to save budget, a caretaker moves from one site in a small multi-site estate to another, or a live-out arrangement becomes a live-in one partway through employment. Several of these count as changes the sponsor needs to report through the Sponsor Management System, and missed reporting is one of the more common findings during a Home Office compliance visit, precisely because day-to-day adjustments like these tend to get made by a site manager or headteacher without anyone treating them as an immigration event. Holding site records, right to work evidence, and DBS status together, rather than split across a facilities file and an HR file, makes it far easier to spot when something has changed and needs reporting.
Questions employers ask
If accommodation is included, does that count toward the salary threshold? Generally no — the relevant salary calculation is based on gross pay, not the value of a tied flat or other benefits in kind, so employers shouldn't rely on housing to bridge a shortfall.
Can one caretaker be sponsored to cover more than one site? The role needs to match a single genuine vacancy at the stated site and salary — covering multiple, separately managed sites usually points to a different, wider-scope role that should be described and paid accordingly.
Does a reduction in a caretaker's contracted hours affect their sponsorship? It can — if the change takes guaranteed pay below the threshold used when the CoS was assigned, that's a reportable problem regardless of overtime or on-call payments that might top earnings back up, since the salary assessment is based on guaranteed contracted hours rather than variable extras.
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