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Brazilians in London
Eat with us
By month
Last Updated 26th Sept 26
Eat and shop
A bakery, a butcher or a restaurant, and the part of London you are in.
Open
Price a head
Hours and prices checked on 26th Sept 26.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Dance
London has learned to dance what is ours. There is forró in Camden, zouk in Exmouth Market, capoeira in Woolwich and a samba school that wins prizes at Notting Hill Carnival.
When
By dance, by area, or the whole week. Today is marked.
The timetable moves. Who posts the class each week is on Going out.
Updated 26th Sept 26
The walk
Five walking routes, all free, each telling a different part of the story. Do them in your own time, alone, with someone, or with the whole crowd.
Select a path
You cannot do these on foot on the same day, but each one is a stop in its own right.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Community
Sunday: Mass in Portuguese at 9am in Bayswater, at 3pm in Fulham, and on most Sundays at 5pm in Camden. The Brazilian chaplaincy runs from 8.30am in Crystal Palace to 7pm in Brixton. Saturday has a chaplaincy Mass in Bayswater, Whitechapel and Willesden, and Portuguese class at BREACC and Clube dos Brasileirinhos.
Brazil does not have one religion. In the 2022 Census, 56.7% declared themselves Catholic, 26.9% evangelical, 9.3% no religion, and 1% umbanda and candomblé, a rise of 233% on 2010. The list above reflects what we were able to confirm in London, and it is far from covering everything. If your community is not here, write to us.
The dates from all 32 boroughs and the City, together, and how they fit the Brazilian summer.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Going out
A class, a room every week, or a match. The rest of the dates go up on Instagram.
Church, live music, pastel and pagode.
A named show goes up months ahead. A party goes up two or three weeks ahead, on Instagram.
Who holds the rights, and which kickoff actually fits a bar.
DanceLondon learned our steps
Eat and shopEat in Portuguese, all the way across London
HomeThe week, on one page.
Updated 26th Sept 26
History
In 2001 the Census found fifteen thousand Brazilians in the whole UK. Today the consulate talks about more than two hundred thousand. Everything that exists now, the bakeries, the samba schools, the churches, the butchers, the Saturday Portuguese class, was built in that gap, by people who arrived and found none of it here.
There is no official data on state of origin: neither the British census nor the Brazilian foreign ministry asks. What exists is academic research with small samples, which gives the order of the states that send most people to London, not the percentage each one contributes. So that is what is here: the order, and not a chart with numbers we do not have. The list shows the largest groups in that research, not every state represented in London.
Beyond the census numbers, these are the areas named repeatedly in studies of the community.
The usual picture is Harlesden, Willesden and central London. But a 2026 survey catalogued Brazilian businesses and organisations across 17 different boroughs, and it spreads much further than the reputation suggests: Lambeth, Haringey, Newham, Hackney, Brent, Islington, Waltham Forest, Greenwich, Barnet, Richmond, Wandsworth, Merton. Central London shows up heavily on a list like that because of universities, associations and restaurant chains, not because it is where the community lives.
Brazilian food here runs on two different economies. One is the destination churrascaria in the centre, where you go to celebrate. The other is the network of neighbourhood butchers, grocers and cafes in the east, north east, north and south, where the same people go every week. If what you want is to find Brazilians, the second is worth far more than the first. A neighbourhood butcher and a Saturday Portuguese school gather more Brazilian families than any fashionable rodízio. And the east is no longer only food: Hackney has grocers and Mass, Tower Hamlets has the chaplaincy base and a university Brazilian society, Newham has food and two salons that work with Afro hair.
The Itamaraty estimate for 2023, 230,000, is almost exactly double the 116,000 in the census. A difference of nearly 114,000 people, and neither one is wrong. The census counts people born in Brazil who live here. The consular estimate tries to count the Brazilian community, which includes children born here, people with dual nationality and people the census does not reach. There is no point averaging the two: they answer different questions.
After 2021 there is no yearly population count by country of birth. The Itamaraty estimate rose from 220,000 in 2022 to 230,000 in 2023.
People born in Brazil living in London, across the three censuses. It is worth looking at the two decades separately, because they say different things. Between 2001 and 2011 the counted community grew by 284%, close to quadrupling. Between 2011 and 2021 it grew by another 78%. So the explosion was in the first decade, and after that growth stayed strong but at a different pace.
In 2001 there were 8,175 Brazilians in the whole of London. Anyone who arrived then arrived to almost nothing: no Brazilian butcher on the High Road, no Portuguese school on Saturdays, no Mass in Portuguese across eight neighbourhoods, no forró class every week. Everything listed on this site was built in twenty years, by people who arrived with none of it and made it. The list of places on this site is, in the end, the list of what our generation and the one before it built.
And the map moved. In 2001 the two largest groups of Brazilians in London were in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, the two most expensive boroughs in the city. By 2021 the four largest are Brent, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Haringey. The places that grew most over those twenty years were not central: Greenwich seventeenfold, Croydon sixteen, Sutton fifteen, Newham fourteen. Kensington and Chelsea grew least of all, barely doubling. In other words: from a small central community it became a large and dispersed one, and it went to the places where you can actually live. And the spreading was not only within London. In 2011, London held 62% of everyone born in Brazil living in England and Wales. By 2021 it was exactly half. The community grew in London and grew faster still outside it.
How many times over the counted community multiplied between 2011 and 2021, looking only at boroughs above 500 people so small numbers do not distort it.
Notice what that means in practice. The places growing fastest today are Croydon, Greenwich, Harrow, Bromley, Merton and Kingston, all outside the centre. Meanwhile Kensington and Chelsea grew by only 17% in ten years, Southwark 23%, Hackney 25%, Camden 28% and Westminster 30%. So anyone arriving today and hearing "go to Willesden" is hearing where the community has been, not where it is going. Rent explains a good part of it.
Boroughs with more than fourteen hundred Brazilians in the census and not one address on our list. It is not that nothing is there: it is that we did not find it.
People born in Brazil and resident in each borough, in the count published by the GLA from ONS data. It counts people born in Brazil, so a child born here is not included. The British census has no Latin American category, so country of birth is the breakdown that exists. Community organisations campaign for a category of their own. The table covers the 32 boroughs and the City of London.
This is not a celebrity list. It is people who came through here and left something, in both directions: those who built something in London and stayed, and those who came to study, learned, and went back to do it in Brazil. There is physics, law, literature, design, music, food and football. Some from two hundred years ago, some very recent. Where there is a source, it is at the end of the block.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Brasil Londres First 90 days checklist, to print and tick off. Always check the official source before acting: rules and figures change.
First 90 days
Thousands of Brazilians have done exactly this, and it has an order. Here it is: what to sort first, what to take with you, and the official link for each step.
Situations where your right is written on an official page. The English is for showing; the Portuguese is so you know what you are showing. Tap Show to open it in large type, or Send to paste it into WhatsApp with the date and the link.
Things that work one way here and another way in Brazil. Not that either is better: they are different systems, and nobody tells you which is which. Here we do.
London gets wet more than it gets cold, and clothing sizes are a different system. The sum and the fitting-room line are here.
A neighbourhood shop on Harlesden High Street, and Brazilian brands with their own door in the centre. A bra fitting, which the size chart does not settle, is at the end. This is what we found, not every shop.
Sorting a bank, a flat, a doctor and a job is work enough in our own language. In English, in a system nobody explains, it is a great deal more.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Housing
In Brazil a fiador settles it, the IPTU belongs to the owner and the deposit sits with them. Here each of those has another name and another rule. This page gathers the order and the official link. If our sentence and the government page disagree, theirs is the one that counts.
The postcode is used to find the borough. We do not keep it.
The deposit sentence, to show the agency
The Renters’ Rights Act changed private renting in England. It applies to people renting from a landlord who does not live in the property. Renting a room in the owner’s home has other rules, set out in the fourth item.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Work
Most of these rights apply from your first day, with no minimum service. Here are the official figures, the rules, and where to find people who understand them. Figures checked in Aug 26: they change every 1 April, and this is information, not legal advice.
This is just arithmetic, done here in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and we store nothing. Rates in force since 1 April 2026.
Within the law. An hour, on the legal count £12.71.
On the figures you entered, this is at or above the legal minimum. Even so, keep your payslips and note your hours every month.
And how much of it you keep
A year, before tax: £24,785
You keep: £411 a week, £21,366 a year.
Estimate for England, standard tax code, one job, no workplace pension or student loan. Your payslip is what counts. 2026/27 bands, checked on 25th Sept 26: GOV.UK, income tax; GOV.UK, National Insurance.
April 2026, at 37.5 hours a week
Where the £975 yearly rise goes
Of the £975, £273 does not arrive, 28% of the rise. The tax-free band has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021. Our calculation, at 37.5 hours, checked in Aug 26. GOV.UK.
Every year the UK changes eight or nine numbers on separate GOV.UK pages, none referring to the others. Here they are together, with the sum nobody publishes.
£12.71 an hour since 1 April 2026. At 37.5 hours a week that is £975 more a year, of which £702 arrives.
The minimum wage went up. The part nobody publishes alongside it is how much of that you keep.
The National Living Wage (21 and over) rose from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour on 1 April 2026, up 4.1%. Someone working 37.5 hours a week went from £23,809 to £24,784 a year, £975 more.
But the personal allowance, the tax-free band, has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021, and the November 2025 Budget extended the freeze to April 2031. Because the threshold did not rise with the wage, the entire increase falls in the taxed band: 20% income tax plus 8% National Insurance.
Of the £975 rise, £702 arrives. The other £273, or 28% of the increase, does not. This is nobody’s mistake and nobody’s scam: it is what happens when the wage is uprated and the tax-free band is not, and it will keep happening each year while the freeze lasts.
For comparison, the voluntary London Living Wage rose to £14.80. Someone paid that rather than the minimum takes home roughly £2,934 more a year. Worth asking at interview whether an employer is a signatory.
Where the £975 yearly rise goes
Minimum wage, sick pay from day one, maternity pay, the redundancy cap and the new Fair Work Agency, with each figure before and after.
These changes were published on separate GOV.UK pages, on different dates, none referring to the others. Here they are together, with each figure before and after.
| What | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| 1 April | ||
| Minimum wage, 21 and over, per hour | £12.21 | £12.71 |
| Ages 18 to 20 (up 8.5%, the biggest rise) | £10.00 | £10.85 |
| Ages 16 to 17 and apprentices | £7.55 | £8.00 |
| Accommodation offset, per day | £10.66 | £11.10 |
| 6 April | ||
| Statutory Sick Pay, per week, now from day one with no earnings floor | £118.75 | £123.25 |
| Maternity and related pay, per week | £187.18 | £194.32 |
| Weekly earnings floor to qualify for maternity pay | £125 | £129 |
| Cap on a week’s pay for redundancy | £719 | £751 |
| 7 April | ||
| Minimum wage enforcement and pay complaints | HMRC | HMRC, under contract to the new Fair Work Agency, which takes over in April 2027 |
| What did not change | ||
| Tax-free allowance | £12,570 | £12,570, frozen |
Being without papers does not, on its own, wipe out what is owed for hours already worked. What can be recovered depends on the case.
The Queen Mary research on Brazilian women in London described a repeated pattern: the employer hires knowing or suspecting the person has no papers, lets them work for weeks or months, and when they ask to be paid, dismisses them without paying, on the grounds that they had no right to be working.
The point that changes things: being without papers does not, on its own, wipe out what is owed for hours already worked. What can be recovered depends on the case, and an organisation on the Help page can look at yours.
An employer using your papers as a reason not to pay is admitting they hired you knowingly, and hiring without checking the right to work is an offence on the employer’s side.
The research recorded a case where the organisation simply warned it would report the employer for treating a worker as slave labour, and the money appeared immediately.
It also recorded cases of domestic servitude: a woman living at her employer’s house, housed in an unheated shed, paying rent deducted from wages she never actually received. In one of those, the employer was also a Brazilian woman.
If this is you or someone you know, the way out is not the employer. It is one of the organisations on the Ajuda page, who help without asking about your visa.
Since 6 April 2026: £123.25 a week from the first day of sickness, with no earnings floor, from your first day in the job.
If you work in cleaning, in restaurants, in care or by the hour, sick pay changed in April 2026.
Statutory Sick Pay, the sick pay your employer is legally required to pay, has always existed. But until March 2026 it had two barriers that excluded precisely the people who needed it most: you were only paid from the fourth day of absence, and only if you earned at least £125 a week.
Since 6 April 2026, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, both barriers are gone:
• Paid from the first day of sickness, no longer the fourth.
• No earnings floor. It does not matter how little you earn a week.
• It applies from your first day of employment, including during probation.
The rate is £123.25 a week, or 80% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower, for up to 28 weeks. It is not much, but for many people it used to be nothing: the government estimates the change brought around 1.3 million low-paid workers into the system.
If you fall ill, tell your employer as soon as you can, in whatever way the company requires. For the first seven days you self-certify, no doctor’s note needed. Beyond seven days they can ask for a fit note, which your GP issues.
Two honest caveats. This is for employees: self-employed people are outside SSP. Being paid in cash does not take away the right if you are an employee. And if the company says you do not qualify, it is legally required to tell you why in writing, on form SSP1.
It is worth knowing this is measured, and that the numbers are large. LAWRS followed 326 cases of Latin American women working in cleaning, hospitality and domestic work in London, and published the result in 2019 in a report called The Unheard Workforce.
It is worth knowing this is measured, and that the numbers are large. LAWRS followed 326 cases of Latin American women working in cleaning, hospitality and domestic work in London, and published the result in 2019 in a report called The Unheard Workforce.
Among those 326 women: 62% had some breach of contract. 46% had wages unlawfully deducted, the most common abuse. One in five was paid below the legal minimum wage, and one in five had no written contract.
41% experienced discrimination, harassment or unreasonable treatment. 16% endured sexual harassment or abuse at work. And in 25% of cases there were health and safety problems, including missing protective equipment and no training.
What the numbers show is a pattern across the sector, documented, and there is an organisation that works on it every day. LAWRS is on the Where to get help page, works in Portuguese, and the call is free.
Since September 2025, working parents can get up to 30 funded hours a week, from 9 months until school. You can apply from 23 weeks old.
This is the calculation that pushes more Brazilian women out of work here than any other. In Brazil many people have a grandmother nearby, an aunt, a neighbour, or pay someone to look after the child at a rate that does not exist here.
None of that exists here, and private nursery in London costs more than a lot of rents. What does exist is a government entitlement, and it is much larger than most people imagine. Since September 2025, working parents can have up to 30 hours a week of funded childcare, for a child from 9 months until they start school.
You can apply for the code from when the child is 23 weeks old, through the government website, and you have to reconfirm every three months.
Note that 30 hours a week usually means 38 weeks a year, the stretched version gives fewer hours per week, and the nursery can still charge separately for meals and nappies, which must be optional.
Childcare is not a public fund: with NRPF, 3 and 4 year olds still get the universal 15 hours a week. The 30 hours do not apply with NRPF.
With NRPF on a visa, the Greater London Authority, on its page for migrant Londoners, says this:
“Childcare does not count as a ‘public fund’ in relation to immigration. If you have ‘no recourse to public funds (NRPF)’ because of your status, then you and your children can still access childcare in the UK.”
For 3 and 4 year olds the 15 hours a week are universal in England, whatever your visa. It is not a benefit, it is early education, so a different rule applies.
Two caveats that matter. The 30 hours for working parents do not apply to families with NRPF: that is the part with a residence requirement.
And for 2 year olds there is an income route, with a London threshold higher than the rest of the country: up to £34,500 a year with one child, or £38,600 with two or more, and no more than £16,000 in savings.
Check with your borough council or directly with the nursery.
Dismissing or treating someone worse for pregnancy, leave or breastfeeding is discrimination from day one, and antenatal appointments come with paid time off.
In Brazil we know maternity leave and the job protection that comes with pregnancy. Here the design is different, with different names, and the essentials are worth knowing.
Pregnancy and maternity are a protected characteristic under equality law here: dismissing, demoting or treating someone worse because they are pregnant, have taken leave or are breastfeeding is discrimination, and that applies from the first day of a job, with no minimum service.
There is a right to maternity leave and, depending on your contribution record and pay, to money during it, which can come from the employer or the state. There is also a right to paid time off for antenatal appointments.
The amounts and the rules on who qualifies for what change often, so confirm on GOV.UK, and if you are being pushed to resign, speak to ACAS or LAWRS before signing anything.
The minimum wage, paid holiday and pay for hours worked apply inside a private home too, and without a record of dates, hours and amounts nothing can be proven later.
Many Brazilian women in London clean houses, and that work has a structural problem: you work alone, inside someone else’s home, with no colleague to compare anything with and nobody watching.
It is where you most often find cash with no receipt, last-minute cancellation without pay, more tasks without more money, and an employer who treats a cleaner as a friend when it suits. Two things genuinely help.
The first is a record: note the date, the hours and the amount for every job, in a notebook or on your phone, because without a record nothing can be proven later. The second is information: LAWRS works on exactly this, in Portuguese, free, and is on the Where to get help page.
The rights to the minimum wage, paid holiday and pay for hours worked apply inside a private home too.
If you are on a student visa, it almost always carries a limit on how many hours you can work per week during term time, with a different limit in the holidays.
If you are on a student visa, it almost always carries a limit on how many hours you can work per week during term time, with a different limit in the holidays. The exact number is written on your own permission, and that is what counts, not what a friend said.
This is not a payroll detail: going over the limit is a visa problem rather than a pay problem, and the consequences are of a different order. Where this catches people in our community most is cash work, sometimes at a Brazilian business, with someone saying nobody checks. They do.
Check your own permission before accepting an extra shift, and if an employer pushes, that already tells you something about them.
In Brazil the minimum wage is monthly. Here it is hourly, and it changes with age.
In Brazil the minimum wage is monthly. Here it is hourly, and it changes with age. Since 1 April 2026 the legal minimum is £12.71 an hour for anyone aged 21 or over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, and £8.00 for under-18s and apprentices.
This is not negotiable: your employer cannot pay less even if you signed something agreeing to it. Enforcement in 2026/27 is still HMRC, even though the Fair Work Agency now exists: that function is due to move to the agency in April 2027. HMRC can order back pay and impose penalties.
Rates change every 1 April, so check the one that applied on the day you were paid.
If your employer provides accommodation, there is a maximum amount that can count as part of your pay: £11.10 a day, capped at £77.70 a week, from April 2026. If they charge more, the excess is deducted from what counts as wages.
That is how an employer with an apparently correct hourly rate ends up paying below the minimum, and it is one of the most common forms of underpayment in hospitality and cleaning.
At home a sector minimum usually comes from a union agreement. Here there is something similar in spirit but with no force of law: the London Living Wage, calculated by the Living Wage Foundation from the real cost of living in the city.
It is much higher than the legal minimum, but it is voluntary: the employer chooses to pay it. You cannot demand it, but you can look for employers who pay it.
In Brazil the carteira assinada is the proof. Here there is no carteira: the proof is the paper you kept. Every payslip, your own record of hours worked, messages agreeing shifts and rates, the contract if there is one.
Employment claims here are won on paper, and whoever kept the paper starts a long way ahead. This matters even more if you are self-employed and invoice your own work.
There is no Ministério do Trabalho to knock on in the same way. ACAS gives free, independent guidance on contracts, dismissal and problems at work. LAWRS supports Latin American women, in Spanish and Portuguese, including employment rights. Both are on the Where to get help page. Seeking advice is the normal way things get resolved here.
Paid holiday applies from day one, zero-hours included. Here is the sum, what a payslip must show and where to complain. Checked in Sept 26, on Acas and GOV.UK.
Almost every worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, including part-time and zero-hours workers. It starts building up on the first day, probation included.
The entitlement is 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, and it applies to full-time, part-time and zero-hours workers. Holiday starts building up on the first day of work, and probation counts too.
The sum is the number of days you work a week times 5.6, capped at 28 days. Five days a week gives 28 days. Three days a week gives 16.8. Bank holidays can be included in those days: the contract says whether they are.
Someone genuinely self-employed is not usually entitled. Anyone working through an agency, or on a contract, should check their own employment status, as Acas recommends.
For anyone whose hours vary, each pay period adds 12.07% of the hours worked as holiday. If the employer pays holiday together with wages, it has to appear separately on the payslip.
Since 1 April 2024 there has been a separate rule for people on irregular hours, the usual case for zero-hours, casual work and being called in only when needed. In each pay period, holiday builds up at 12.07% of the hours worked.
The Acas example: someone who worked 70 hours in the period builds up 8 hours 27 minutes, which rounds to 8 hours. Under half an hour rounds down, half an hour or more rounds up.
The employer can also pay holiday together with wages, known as rolled-up holiday pay. It is then at least 12.07% of the pay for each period, and it must appear as a separate line on the payslip. Someone who earned £1,000 in the period should see at least £120.70 of holiday pay.
The catch: when you take the holiday, you get nothing for those days, because you were paid in advance.
Paying holiday together with wages is only allowed for irregular hours. For fixed hours it is banned.
A week of holiday is paid at what you normally earn, counting regular overtime and commission. When hours vary, it is the average of the last 52 paid weeks.
Holiday is paid at what you normally earn, not just basic pay. According to GOV.UK, normal pay includes commission, regular overtime and payments for length of service or qualifications. Bonuses usually do not count.
Someone on fixed hours gets 4 of the 5.6 weeks at normal pay, and the other 1.6 can be paid at basic pay only. Someone on irregular hours gets all of it at normal pay.
When hours vary, a week of holiday is the average of the last 52 paid weeks. Weeks without pay are left out, and the count goes back no more than 104 weeks. Someone on shifts with regular hours averages their fixed weekly hours over 52 weeks.
You ask twice as far ahead as the time off: 20 days ahead for 10 days off, unless the contract says otherwise. The employer can refuse, but cannot deny all holiday. When you leave, what is left must be paid.
Unless the contract says otherwise, you ask twice as far ahead as the time off: for 10 days away, ask 20 days before. The employer can refuse or cancel, giving the same amount of notice as the leave, 7 days ahead for 7 days of holiday.
They can also set compulsory dates, such as a year-end closure, giving twice the notice. What they cannot do is refuse all your holiday.
When the job ends, holiday built up and not taken must be paid in the final pay, known as payment in lieu. If you took more than you had built up, the employer can only deduct it from wages if that was agreed beforehand, in writing.
Every employee and worker is entitled to a payslip, on paper or online, by payday. It shows pay before and after deductions, and the hours, if pay depends on them.
It is not a favour. An employee or worker is entitled to a payslip, on paper or online, on or before payday. It must show:
• pay before deductions, the gross pay;
• deductions that vary, such as tax and National Insurance;
• pay after deductions, the net pay;
• the number of hours, when pay depends on the hours worked.
Fixed deductions can go on the payslip or in a separate statement, given before the first payslip and updated every year.
A contractor or freelancer who is neither an employee nor a worker is not entitled. To ask for a payslip in English, the ready-made line is in the English phrases. And the calculator at the top of this page shows whether the hourly rate meets the minimum.
1257L is the code for most people with one job. Ending in W1, M1 or X, or 0T, it is worth checking in the HMRC app and giving your P45 to the new employer.
Every payslip shows a tax code, which tells the employer how much tax to take. The most common is 1257L: the L means the standard tax-free allowance, the Personal Allowance, of £12,570 a year.
Two cases need attention:
• A code ending in W1, M1 or X, or showing NONCUM, is an emergency code. Tax is worked out on that week or month alone, without looking at the rest of the year.
• 0T means no allowance in that job.
It can be because the allowance has been used up, or because the job is new and the employer does not have your details.
What to do: give the P45 from your last job to the new employer, and check the code on the Check your Income Tax service or in the HMRC app. HMRC asks you to wait 35 days after starting a job before getting in touch, because updating can take that long. If too much tax was taken, the refund usually comes through your pay.
To take a case to an employment tribunal, the limit is usually 3 months less one day, and in most cases you must tell Acas first. On the government side, the Fair Work Agency takes complaints.
First, try to sort it out with the employer, in writing, and keep everything. The hours notebook just below helps you gather the dates and amounts.
If that does not work, there are two free routes:
• Acas: 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Before going to an employment tribunal, in most cases you must tell Acas first, through what is called early conciliation.
The limit is usually 3 months less one day from the problem: paid wrongly on 1 May, the limit runs to 31 July. Telling Acas pauses the clock while conciliation lasts.
Where the time limit starts on or after 1 October 2026, most cases get 6 months less one day.
• Fair Work Agency, the government body for rights at work: an online form for minimum wage, working hours and agency problems, or 0345 161 6000.
Since 6 April 2026, employers must keep records of holiday and holiday pay for 6 years, and can be fined if they do not.
Write it down on the day. If you ever need to complain, the date of every shift and what was paid make the difference. It stays on this device only, and nothing is sent.
Nothing written down yet. Every shift you add appears here, with the totals.
It stays only in this browser, on this device. Anyone who uses your phone can see it: if the device is shared, or someone controls what you do on it, download the spreadsheet and delete everything. The spreadsheet opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers.
Sites and apps pay another way. Here is the official name of each deduction, and the page that publishes today’s rate.
Registered and verified: 20%. Unregistered, or not verified: 30%. With gross payment status: nothing. All three are on the HMRC page.
In Brazil a site deduction, where it exists, shows on the payslip under INSS and income tax. Here, someone working as a subcontractor in construction comes under the Construction Industry Scheme, CIS. The contractor takes the deduction, and it is an advance on tax and National Insurance, not an extra tax on top.
On 26th Sept 26 the GOV.UK page for subcontractors described, in short, three deductions: 20% if you are registered for CIS and they can verify you. 30% if either of those fails. Nothing if you have gross payment status, in which case the tax is yours to pay on the return. The exact sentence is on the page, not this one.
Registration is on GOV.UK, free, before the first payment. Ask for the statement of each payment: it says which rate was taken. If the government page changes the number, their number is the one that counts.
Site gates ask for the CSCS card for the role. Which card, the scheme’s own site says.
Site manager, bricklayer, labourer: the English name of the role is on the job-title list on this page. What the gate asks for, on most large sites, is a CSCS card. The scheme publishes which card matches which role, and what it takes to get one.
We are not writing card colours here. Colour changes with the role and with the scheme’s rule, and a wrong colour sends someone to pay for the wrong course. The CSCS site is the list.
An umbrella company sits between you and the contractor. GOV.UK explains what to check. This site does not say whether a particular company is sound.
On sites and on some care contracts a company appears in the middle: it employs you, or says it does, and keeps a slice before the money arrives. The English name is umbrella company.
GOV.UK has a guide to how this works and what to ask to see, including the key information document. We are not summarising the guide in its place, and we recommend no company. If the pay does not match what the guide describes, the route for unpaid wages is on this same Work page, further up.
GOV.UK publishes the three categories. The 2021 Uber case decided those drivers. It does not decide your app. ACAS will read your contract with you, free.
In Brazil, app drivers argue employment status in the labour courts. Here GOV.UK separates three things: employee, worker and self-employed. Holiday, the minimum wage and sick pay do not apply the same way to all three.
Which one you are depends on the contract and on how the work actually happens, not on what the app writes at the top of the screen.
In 2021 the UK Supreme Court decided, in Uber BV and others v Aslam, that the drivers in that case were workers. That does not copy across to another app, or to another year, without reading today’s contract. ACAS has a free check. This site classifies nobody.
In Brazil the MEI folds tax and social security into one bill. Here they are two conversations with HMRC, on different dates. The deadlines below are the ones on the government page the day we checked. The link is the year that is in force.
First time: tell HMRC by 5 October. Online filing and payment: 31 January. The exact years are on the deadlines page.
In Brazil a self-employed person files on one Receita deadline. Here someone working for themselves, or with income outside a salary, comes under Self Assessment. On 26th Sept 26 the GOV.UK deadlines page gave two dates for the 2025 to 2026 tax year.
Tell HMRC by 5 October 2026 if you need to file for that year and have never filed before, or you were registered and did not file the year before. File online and pay by 31 January 2027. Someone who tells them late can be given another filing date, by letter, and the 31 January payment date still stands.
Who has to register is on the registration page. The estimate just below uses the £1,000 trading allowance, checked on the date it shows. If that changes, the GOV.UK page is the one that counts.
Class 2 and Class 4 change every April. The estimate just below uses the figures for two tax years, with the date they were checked. The GOV.UK page is the one that counts.
In Brazil a self-employed person’s INSS is a percentage of what they declare. Here someone self-employed pays National Insurance under its own rules, under the names Class 2 and Class 4. The figures, and who is above or below the floor, are on a GOV.UK page that changes every April.
The estimate just below uses the 2025 to 2026 and 2026 to 2027 figures, checked on the date it shows. They change in April, and if the estimate and the page disagree, the page wins. This is for someone working here.
Contributing from abroad, after leaving the country, is a different regime: Class 2 from overseas ended on 6 April 2026, and the detail is on the Money page. What these years do, or do not, count for in the INSS of someone going back to Brazil is there too.
For anyone self-employed, on site or not. Enter the figures for the whole tax year. The sum shows, roughly, what the return will come to: tax to pay or money back. Nothing you type leaves this page.
Enter what you earned to see the sum.
This is an estimate. It is for England, for someone living here with only this income. It leaves out private pensions, student loans, savings, rental income, Child Benefit and the year before. The real figure is the one on your return, and HMRC can ask for proof of every expense.
Figures from GOV.UK, checked on 27th Sept 26: income tax rates, self-employed National Insurance, CIS: pay tax and claim back deductions, trading allowance, payments on account.
Around half of Latin Americans in London hold a university education, above the city average. Even so, plenty of people work below what they can do. What holds people back at the start is almost always the same three things: the language, a qualification not recognised straight away, and no track record here.
A job title does not translate word for word. The literal translation is a name a British employer does not use, and a search for it comes back empty.
Search these termshealthcare assistant, HCA, nursing associate
This is the most expensive translation to get wrong. Técnico de enfermagem is not a nurse here. Nurse is an NMC-registered title requiring the full registration process. Applying for nurse roles with a técnico qualification gets you rejected without interview. The matching role is Healthcare Assistant, and from there a route exists to Nursing Associate and then to nurse, often paid for by the trust.
Search these termsparalegal, legal assistant, compliance
Law here is split: a solicitor advises and prepares, a barrister goes to court. Both are regulated and need UK qualification. In the meantime the role that accepts a foreign law degree and legal experience is paralegal, and that is how many Brazilian lawyers start.
Search these termsadministrative assistant, office administrator, admin assistant
Do not search for "auxiliary": nobody uses it. The word is assistant or administrator. Note that administrator here is not a manager, it is the person running the admin, so it is the right level to search.
Search these termssite manager, site supervisor, foreman, construction supervisor
The literal translation does not exist in English. The role is Site Manager or Foreman. To work on site here you will need a CSCS card, and a supervisor’s card depends on an NVQ. The right type for your role is on the CSCS site.
Search these termsbusiness development manager, account manager, sales manager
"Commercial Manager" exists in English but means something else: contract and cost management, usually in construction. If your job was selling and looking after clients, search Business Development or Account Manager.
Search these termssoftware developer, software engineer, backend developer, full stack
"Systems Analyst" exists but is a rarer and older title here. The standard is Software Developer or Engineer, usually with the technology attached: Python Developer, Java Engineer. And there is no revalidation at all: you apply and show what you can build.
Search these termsmarketing executive, account manager, brand manager, digital marketing
There is no job called "publicitário" here, and the field is split. If you did client work, search Account Manager. If you were creative, Copywriter or Creative. If you did planning and media, Marketing Executive or Digital Marketing.
Search these termsteaching assistant, learning support, SEN teaching assistant
Pedagogia does not exist as a separate profession here. The usual route is Teaching Assistant, a real and paid role that many Brazilian graduates enter through. SEN Teaching Assistant, for special educational needs, usually pays more and has fewer applicants.
Search these termsdietitian, nutritionist, nutrition advisor
Dietitian is a protected title, registered with the HCPC, and is who works in the NHS. Nutritionist is not protected: anyone may use it. If you want hospital work, the route is dietitian registration. For private practice nutritionist is enough, though voluntary AfN registration adds credibility.
Search these termsestate agent, lettings negotiator, property consultant
The profession is not regulated here as it is in Brazil: there is no CRECI equivalent. You can start as a Lettings Negotiator, on the rentals side, usually with a low base salary plus commission.
Search these termsaccounts assistant, bookkeeper, accounts payable, finance assistant
Accountant is not a protected title here, but almost every senior role asks for ACCA, ACA or CIMA. The usual route for someone qualified in Brazil is to start as an Accounts Assistant or Bookkeeper and study ACCA alongside, often employer-funded.
Search these termscare assistant, support worker, healthcare assistant, live-in carer
Search Care Assistant or Support Worker. Worth knowing the sector has a serious shortage, so there is work, and that Support Worker often pays more than Care Assistant for similar work: search both terms.
Search these termsdomestic cleaner, housekeeper, cleaning operative
The diarista model, self-employed and cleaning several regular homes, exists but is less organised here. Roles appear as Domestic Cleaner, Housekeeper or Cleaning Operative. If you work for yourself and earn more than £1,000 in the tax year, you must register as self-employed with HMRC, which changes what you pay and what you get if you fall ill.
Search these termskitchen porter, kitchen assistant, commis chef
Kitchen Porter is the entry level, mostly washing up and cleaning. Commis Chef is actual cooking, the first rung of the brigade, and pays more. If you already cooked in Brazil, apply for commis, not porter.
Search these termsdelivery driver, courier, multi-drop driver
"Motoboy" does not exist in English. Search Courier or Delivery Rider for app work, and Multi-drop Driver for parcel delivery, which is usually contracted and pays better per hour than app work.
Search these termsHR advisor, HR officer, people advisor, recruitment coordinator
"HR Analyst" is barely used. The title is HR Advisor or HR Officer, and many companies now call the function People: search People Advisor too. The CIPD qualification is what opens senior doors.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Money
Sending it home, what that really costs, and what happens to what you already paid here.
If you send money to Brazil, or know someone who does, this is the check before you send. This is the text to send them.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Health
Mostly the things that work completely differently from Brazil.
English phrases to show at the GP and the pharmacy
Updated 26th Sept 26
Children
In Brazil you enrol at the neighbourhood school, and a child of a Brazilian is Brazilian. Here a place is applied for, with a date, and being born here does not by itself answer either the British passport or the Brazilian one. The order is below. Each deadline lives on the official page, with the date we read it.
Saturday Portuguese, on the Community page
Updated 26th Sept 26
Documents
This is the part that appears in no expat guide, because it only exists if you are Brazilian. Apostille, sworn translation, consular registration, power of attorney, and pensions on both sides. Every mistake here costs money and time.
A note for anyone planning to go back, whether in a year or in twenty. Much of what makes that return easy gets settled while you are still here, not afterwards. Apostilling a British certificate is simpler to do in London than from Brazil, because an apostille can only be issued by the country that produced the document. Registering a child at the consulate is easier now than as a legal process later. A British degree is easier to gather paperwork for now, with the university nearby. And time contributed here does not transfer to the Brazilian pension system, so knowing that early changes what you do with the money. This page holds all three: what you owe Brazil while living abroad, what to do with your degree from here, and what is best settled before you fly.
Living here does not switch everything off there. Tax, voter registration, military enlistment, CPF, registering a child and your driving licence all still exist, and three of them can block your passport. No British guide will tell you this because it is not their subject. Position as at Aug 26: confirm with the Brazilian body before acting, because these rules change.
The deadlines that come round every year, from both governments, in one place. No guide puts the two together because each one only handles its own side. Dates checked in Aug 26: each has its source in the corresponding section of the site.
This part is about your Brazilian qualification counting here. If what you want is the reverse, a British qualification counting in Brazil, that is just below, under A degree from here, valid in Brazil. Nine professions, with the body that decides, whether your qualification is assessed directly or there is an exam, the English required and the published cost. Position as at Aug 26: fees and timelines change often, so check the link before spending.
In three professions the Brazilian qualification is assessed directly, with no compulsory conversion exam: physiotherapy, psychology and engineering. In those, your training and experience are compared against the standard here, and good documentation can be enough. In the others there is an exam, but none of them makes you repeat an entire degree.
One thing applies to all of them: whoever decides your case decides by looking at paper. A detailed curriculum, placement and clinical hours, module descriptions, proof of registration with your professional council and a certificate of good standing, all with certified translation. The quality of the documentation changes the outcome. It is worth reading the apostille and sworn translation section on this same page before you start. And if you work in beauty or aesthetics, this is not your route: it is borough licensing, and it is on the Beauty page.
This applies to most people: if your profession is not regulated here, nobody needs to recognise your qualification. Marketing, technology, administration, accountancy, design, logistics, sales, human resources, hospitality. In those fields there is no council, no conversion exam and no compulsory registration. You simply apply for the job, like anyone from here.
What does exist, and helps, is UK ENIC: a paid service that compares your Brazilian qualification against the equivalent British level and issues a statement. That is not professional recognition and it is not a licence: it is a translation of level, useful for job applications, for university and for some borough licence applications. Plenty of people spend money on a course here believing they have to start again, when what was missing was an explanation of what their qualification already is.
Regulator fees only, so you can see the difference in scale before choosing a route. It excludes the English test, sworn translation, preparation courses, travel and course fees, which in pharmacy and law are the larger expense. Figures checked in Aug and Sept 26.
A planning estimate, not anyone’s promise. It counts from the point where you already have documents, translations and English in hand. Exam availability, incomplete paperwork and resits all stretch it.
The exit declaration, INSS and what you already paid here are further up and on the Money page. This is the rest of the week: FGTS, who to tell on this side, and the visa for whoever is going with you. We do not pick a visa. The consulate publishes the list.
Consular registration is one line of the paperwork, further up. The week itself has another order, and it is written on GOV.UK and at the consulate. This page points at both. It recommends no funeral director and gives no repatriation price.
If you came here to study and intend to go back, a British degree is not automatically valid in Brazil: depending on what you plan to do, it has to go through revalidação or reconhecimento. If your case is the reverse, a Brazilian qualification for working here, that is just above, under Regulated professions. Position as at Aug 26, with the official link on each item.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Links
Every official link cited on this site, gathered here with the date we checked it. The idea is simple: rules and figures can change at any time, and it is always the official body that decides, not us. If it matters to you, open the source and check today’s version.
Glossary
NI number, council tax, GP, UTR, AST. Words that turn up in every letter and every job interview. Here is what each one means.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Where to get help
There is a whole network built for this, much of it by Latin American women, and several of them work in Portuguese. These are the right doors to knock on.
If you are in danger right now, call 999. Speak if you can, even in a whisper.
What follows are the words of the Metropolitan Police, on their own page about making a silent 999 call. The link is at the end of the block.
“If you’re in danger, call 999 and try to speak to the operator if you can, even by whispering.”
“If you don’t speak or answer questions, press 55 or tap when prompted and your call will be transferred to the police.”
“The police will usually be able to find your location.”
“If you don’t press 55 or respond, your call could be ended.”
Press 55 when prompted, not before: it is not a shortcut, it is the answer to the automated message. And staying silent and doing nothing else does not guarantee that police will come to you: correcting that misconception is why the IOPC ran the national Make Yourself Heard campaign.
For non-emergencies the police number is 101. The national domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247, 24 hours. LAWRS, in Portuguese, is 0808 145 4909, Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 1pm, free to call.
Checked and updated on 26th Sept 26. Quotations above are verbatim from the official page. Guidance can change: check the original. met.police.uk
First of all, about the device you are using. The red button above leaves this page immediately and replaces the address, but it does not erase your browser history. If there is any chance someone checks your phone or computer, it is worth using a private window, or a friend’s device, or a library computer. This site asks for no account and sends nothing about you to anyone. But the browser keeps your history and, for this site, a copy of the pages so they open offline, plus anything you save here, such as the hours notebook. In a private window, none of that stays once you close it.
Rights that already exist in law, each with its official source. This site gives no immigration advice and says nothing about anyone’s situation: what is here is only what the rule already guarantees to any person.
If you came here to study, start with your own university, because it is the closest and fastest support there is. Almost every large London university has free counselling, mental health support, visa guidance and sometimes emergency financial help, all already paid for inside your fees. And there are Brazilian student societies at Queen Mary, King’s College, the LSE and Imperial, listed below: they generally welcome people from outside the university at events, and it is the quickest way to meet other Brazilians who arrived when you did.
How to find your people, without depending on this list. Student societies change committee every year, change Instagram account, and sometimes vanish for a year and come back the next, so any list of handles ages fast, including ours. What does not change is the route: look on your university’s students’ union website, which lists societies officially and keeps the page up between one committee and the next; go to the freshers’ fair in the first fortnight of the academic year, which is when they recruit; and search Instagram for brazilian society plus your university name. If your university does not have one, many welcome people from outside at events, so it is worth writing to the nearest. Found one that is not here, or one that has died? Write to us.
The scams that most often catch people who have just arrived: rooms, jobs with a visa, agencies, fake messages and borrowed accounts. Each item says what the official body says, and who to call.
Control of money is among the factors in abuse most often named by organisations serving Brazilian women in London, and the argument is always the same: you cannot manage without me. This does not answer whether you should leave. It only answers what the state pays a woman living on her own, with or without children, so you have a real number instead of his.
We do not keep a list of professionals and we recommend nobody. What we can do, and it is worth more, is show you where to check the person you have already found. Every one of these registers is public, free, and takes under a minute.
Ask for the full name and the registration number, and check it yourself. Anyone serious gives you both without hesitating. Someone who stalls on the number has already answered your question.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Beauty and aesthetics
We take nothing to be listed.
What are you booking?
Premises licence: pick your borough
Updated 26th Sept 26
About
Brazilians have been in London for decades, but the growth is recent: in 2001 the Census pointed to just over fifteen thousand Brazilian-born people in the whole UK, and today the consulate talks about more than two hundred thousand Brazilians. Which means almost everything here today, the bakeries, the samba schools, the churches, the butchers, the Portuguese school on a Saturday morning, was built by this generation, from nothing, in a foreign language. Brasil Londres is simply an attempt to put all of it in one place.
Right now we charge nobody to appear here, and if that ever changes we will say so on this page. We are not lawyers, accountants or doctors, and we do not give advice. When something matters, we point you to people qualified to deal with it.
This is not the complete list, and it does not try to be. What we need already exists, scattered: a council page, a samba school’s Instagram, an NHS site, a consulate form. Nearly every line here links out, on purpose: their page stays right after ours goes stale.
If you run events and want to be listed, or you have found a link that is wrong or out of date, write to us.
This site has no connection whatsoever to the Brazilian government, the consulate, the embassy, the British government or the NHS. We represent nobody and we provide no consular service. When we quote or link an official body, it is only so you can reach the source: whoever decides anything about your case is that body, not this site.
We ask for no registration, use no tracking cookies and have no visitor analytics. What happens when the map opens, or when you search for a postcode, is on Privacy.
If you own a business or organisation named here and the information is wrong, out of date, or you simply do not want to appear, write to us and we will correct it or remove it. No argument and no bureaucracy. The same goes for any link, figure or date.
