As part of your visa application, you will need to pay a healthcare surcharge (called the ‘Immigration Health Surcharge' or IHS) in order to access the National Health Service (NHS) throughout your stay in the UK.

You usually need to pay the healthcare surcharge if you’re applying for a visa, which is:

• for more than six months, if you’re applying outside the UK
• for any length of time, if you’re applying inside the UK

The IHS fee is £1,035 per year (£776 per year for applicants who are under the age of 18 at time of application).

IHS charges are calculated in six-month increments. In other words, if you’re applying from inside the UK for six months or less, you’ll have to pay half the yearly cost. If your visa is for more than a year (wherever you apply from), you’ll have to pay:

• the yearly cost plus half the yearly cost, if it’s for 18 months or less
• the cost of two full years, if it’s for more than 18 months but less than two years, etc.

The exact amount you pay depends on the length of the visa you’re given, e.g. if a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) is assigned for exactly 12 months, in practice the grant will include two weeks at the end of the work period and possibly a travel date which is before the work date, that could take you into the next six month period and subject to the fee for one and half years.

When making your visa application online, you will pay the surcharge as part of your application. You will need a credit or debit card for this. You can calculate how much you’ll have to pay before you apply, but you should include any additional time (such as in the example above) for an accurate calculation.

In certain cases, the IHS portal calculates the correct amount of IHS for the main applicant but interprets the same data slightly differently for the dependants, resulting in a further six months’ IHS being charged to them. In those cases where the IHS portal charges the dependants more, they will be entitled to a refund for overpayment after issue of the visa.