The number of visa applications for work and study in the UK dropped by nearly 400,000 following the implementation of new restrictions aimed at reducing legal migration.

Provisional figures from the Home Office reveal that 547,000 applications were submitted between April and December 2024, compared to 942,500 during the same period in 2023. This represents a decrease of 395,100, or 42%, largely due to significant reductions in applications from international students and foreign care workers.

The restrictions, introduced by the former Conservative government between January and April of last year, were part of an effort to address the record high levels of legal migration. Measures included banning overseas care workers from bringing family dependents and raising the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700. The goal was to reduce the annual number of arrivals by 300,000.

Other reforms meant overseas students were stopped from bringing their family with them to the UK and made it harder for Britons earning under the national average to bring over foreign spouses.

The policy changes prompted warnings that universities and the care industry could struggle to cope with the consequences.

The overall drop of 42% in visa requests for main applicants and dependants masks big differences in the size of the fall across the different categories of immigration papers available, according to PA news agency analysis of the latest figures published on Thursday.

Applications to come to the UK on a health and care worker visa fell by a much steeper figure of 79%, from 299,800 in April to December 2023 compared with 63,800 in the same period in 2024.

The social care sector previously hit out at the potential ramifications of the dependants ban, branding it “brutal” and blaming the policy for cutting a “lifeline of overseas staff”.

There was a 29% drop in sponsored study visa numbers, down from 546,100 in the nine months from April to December 2023, compared with 389,800 in the equivalent period last year.

Universities have warned of significant financial concerns as a result of frozen domestic tuition fees and a decline in overseas students following the policy changes.

By contrast, there was a much smaller drop of just 3% for main applicants and dependants applying for skilled worker visas, from 96,600 in April to December 2023 to 93,800 last year.

But this is higher than the number recorded in the equivalent nine-month period in 2022 (92,300).