My first part-time job in the UK, a café near campus, had me down for 28 hours a week on the rota within my second month. I didn’t say anything. I was grateful for the hours, my landlord wanted rent on time, and I genuinely didn’t know I was allowed to say anything.
It wasn’t until a coursemate casually mentioned the 20-hour limit during a conversation about something completely unrelated that I realised I’d been quietly breaching my visa conditions for weeks, not because I was trying to cheat the system, but because nobody had actually sat me down and explained what my rights and limits were.
That’s the theme I keep running into with other international students here. Most of us know roughly that we “have rights,” in the vague way everyone knows that. Almost nobody actually knows the specifics until something goes wrong. So here’s the version I wish someone had handed me on day one — not a legal textbook, just the practical stuff that actually comes up.
Your Work Rights (This Is the One That Trips Up Almost Everyone)
If you’re on a Student visa studying a degree-level course, you can work up to 20 hours a week during term time, and full-time during official university vacations. If your course is below degree level, that drops to 10 hours a week during term time.
The bit that catches people out, the same way it caught me, is that this limit is per calendar week, not averaged out. Working 28 hours one week and 12 the next doesn’t balance out to fine. Each individual week that goes over the limit is a breach, full stop. The Home Office defines the week as Monday to Sunday, though double-check your contract because some employers count it differently internally.
A few other things about work rights that genuinely surprised me:
- Two part-time jobs still count as one total. If you’re working 12 hours at one job and 10 at another, that’s 22 hours, and you’ve breached your limit, even though neither job alone crossed the line.
- Self-employment is banned outright, regardless of your course level. Freelancing, running your own small business, even certain gig-economy setups can count as self-employment depending on how they’re structured.
- “Off the books” cash work doesn’t protect you. I know people who assumed cash-in-hand shifts at restaurants wouldn’t show up anywhere. HMRC and UKVI can and do cross-check, and it’s illegal for you and the employer both.
- Unpaid work can still count as “work” if there’s a genuine working arrangement behind it, so an unpaid internship isn’t automatically a loophole.
If you’re not sure what your specific limit is, it’s written on your eVisa status, which you can check through your UKVI account online. Don’t just trust what a friend on a different course type tells you, because the limit genuinely depends on your specific course level.
Yes, Minimum Wage Rights Apply to You Too
This one genuinely shocked me when I first learned it. Your immigration status has nothing to do with your right to be paid the legal minimum wage. None. An employer cannot pay you less because you’re an international student, and they cannot legally justify it by saying it’s “training pay” or “cash in hand so it evens out.”
As of April 2026, the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour. For workers aged 18 to 20, it’s £10.85 an hour. Nobody can pay you below this, and no contract you sign can override it, even if you agreed to a lower number in writing.
I had a friend who worked at a small independent restaurant that paid a flat £9 an hour “because it’s a small business.” That’s not legal, regardless of the business size. If your payslip doesn’t match up, the government now has a dedicated enforcement body, the Fair Work Agency, launched in April 2026, that handles minimum wage and holiday pay complaints without you needing to have already left the job first.
You’re also entitled to statutory paid holiday, currently 5.6 weeks a year, calculated proportionally even if you’re on a zero-hours contract. I didn’t realise this applied to part-time student jobs until my second year, and I’d been quietly missing out on holiday pay I was legally owed the whole time.
You Have a Right to a National Insurance Number and Fair Payroll Treatment
You need an NI number to be paid correctly and taxed properly, but you don’t need to wait for it to arrive before starting a job. You can start working as soon as you’ve applied, using your BRP or digital immigration status as proof to your employer, and add the NI number once it comes through.
Keep your NI number somewhere you can actually find it. I lost mine in an email thread I never labelled properly and had to dig through months of forwarded messages to track it down before my second job.
Housing Rights: You’re Not a Second-Class Tenant
This is the area where I’ve seen the most students quietly accept things they shouldn’t. A landlord cannot legally refuse to rent to you purely because of your nationality or immigration status, though they are required to run a “right to rent” check to confirm you’re allowed to be in the UK.
What you are protected against:
- Illegal eviction. A landlord can’t just change the locks or tell you to leave without going through the proper legal process, regardless of your visa type.
- Unfair deposit handling. Your deposit must legally be protected in a government-approved scheme, and you’re entitled to see proof of where it’s held.
- Discrimination in the rental process itself, which falls under the Equality Act, the same law that protects UK residents from discrimination based on nationality, race, or religion.
I had a landlord once try to charge a “student administration fee” on top of rent and deposit that wasn’t in the tenancy agreement. Turned out that wasn’t legally enforceable, and a quick email pushing back on it (citing the tenancy agreement directly) made it quietly disappear. I wish I’d known earlier that you’re allowed to push back on things like that instead of assuming landlords have unlimited authority over international tenants specifically.
Healthcare Rights
If you’ve paid the Immigration Health Surcharge as part of your visa, you’re entitled to NHS treatment on essentially the same terms as a UK resident, GP visits, hospital treatment, A&E, mental health services, all included. What it doesn’t cover is prescriptions, dental work, and eye tests, which everyone pays standard charges for regardless of nationality.
Register with a GP as soon as you arrive, even if you feel completely fine. I put this off for almost four months my first year, told myself I’d “get to it,” and then needed a GP appointment during a stressful exam period and had to register and book at the same time, which delayed everything by almost two weeks.
Protection From Discrimination and Harassment
The Equality Act 2010 protects you against discrimination based on race, nationality, religion, and several other characteristics, both in employment and in everyday services like housing, education, and public spaces. This applies to you as an international student the same as it applies to any UK resident.
If something happens that feels like discrimination, whether from an employer, landlord, or even university staff, most universities have a dedicated international student support office or student union advice service that can point you toward the right next step, and it’s genuinely their job to help with exactly this, not an inconvenience to bring to them.
Common Mistakes I’ve Seen (and Made)
Not checking your specific work hour limit before accepting a job offer. Ask directly, don’t assume it matches a friend’s situation just because you’re both international students.
Assuming cash-in-hand work is invisible. It isn’t, and it puts your visa at genuine risk, not just a fine.
Staying quiet about wage or holiday pay issues out of fear it’ll affect your visa. Reporting unfair pay through official channels doesn’t put your immigration status at risk. Working illegally over your hour limit does. Those are two very different things.
Not reading your tenancy agreement properly before signing. I signed my first one without reading past the rent amount and moved in date. There were clauses in there about cleaning fees I only found out about when I got charged for them.
Assuming your rights are somehow “less” because you’re not a UK national. For employment and housing specifically, most core protections apply to you the same way they apply to anyone else living and working here.
Final Thoughts
None of this is about being suspicious of every employer or landlord you meet, most people here are perfectly reasonable. It’s about knowing where the actual lines are, so you’re not finding out the hard way, the way I did with that 28-hour rota, or the way my friend did with a flat-rate wage that wasn’t legal.
Knowing your rights isn’t complicated once someone actually lays it out. Check your specific work hour limit the moment you get a job offer, keep your paperwork somewhere you can find it, and don’t assume being an international student means accepting worse treatment than anyone else. Most of the time, it just means asking the right question a little earlier than I did.