Sponsor licence questions, answered

It is permission from the Home Office to employ people who do not already have the right to work in the UK. You need one to hire most overseas nationals, including EU citizens who arrived after 31 December 2020. You do not need one for Irish citizens, people with settled or pre-settled status, or anyone with indefinite leave to remain.

Yes, but the bar is the same: you have to show a genuine trading business with a genuine vacancy and the means to pay the salary. A company incorporated last month with no trading history, no contracts and no bank activity will struggle, and a refusal on suitability grounds carries a cooling-off period.

Usually yes, if they are on a visa they can switch from. You still need the licence first, and you still assign a certificate — an undefined one, because they are applying in-country. You cannot switch someone from a visit visa or most short-term permissions.

Most licences stay valid for as long as you keep meeting the requirements, with no renewal date. Scale-up Worker and UK Expansion Worker licences are the exception: those last 4 years and cannot be renewed.

You are small if you meet at least two of: turnover of £10.2 million or less, total assets of £5.1 million or less, and 50 employees or fewer. Registered charities count as small regardless of size. It matters, because the large-sponsor licence fee and Immigration Skills Charge are roughly three times the small rate.

Most applications are decided in less than 8 weeks. A priority service is available for an additional £750, which brings that down to around 10 working days — but only a small number of priority slots are released each working day, so it is not something you can rely on being available when you need it.

The Worker licence fee is £611 for small or charitable sponsors and £1,682 for medium or large sponsors. A Temporary Worker licence is £611 whatever your size. After that, each hire costs £525 for the certificate of sponsorship on Worker routes, plus the Immigration Skills Charge at £480 per year for small sponsors and £1,320 for medium or large ones.

They might, before the licence is granted and at any point afterwards. Visits are often unannounced. The visiting officer is checking whether the HR systems you described in the application actually exist and are actually being used — so describing a process you have not built yet is a bad idea.

An Authorising Officer, a Key Contact and at least one Level 1 User. The Authorising Officer must be a senior person inside your business with responsibility for recruitment or HR — it cannot be an external consultant. At least one Level 1 User must also be your own employee.

There is no appeal. You can ask for an error correction review if the caseworker got something factually wrong, but not simply because you disagree. Most refusals mean a cooling-off period, commonly 12 months, before you can apply again — which is why getting the first application right matters more than getting it in quickly.

Defined certificates are for Skilled Workers applying from outside the UK. You request each one through the sponsorship management system and the decision usually comes back within one working day. Undefined certificates cover Skilled Workers applying from inside the UK and every other route — you estimate how many you need when you apply, and request more later if needed.

The worker must use it to apply for their visa within 3 months of it being assigned, and they must not apply more than 3 months before the job start date. Miss the window and the certificate is wasted, along with its fee.

No. The licence fee, the certificate fee and the Immigration Skills Charge are all employer costs, and recovering any of them from the worker — including by deduction from wages — puts the licence at serious risk. The worker does pay their own visa fee and Immigration Health Surcharge.

Yes. Certain research and higher education occupation codes are exempt, along with dependants of sponsored workers, people switching from a student visa, and some Global Business Mobility transfers. Getting this wrong in either direction is a common and avoidable error.

Three things, continuously: report changes to UKVI inside the deadline, keep the records set out in the guidance for every sponsored worker, and carry out right to work checks properly across your whole workforce. Most changes to a worker's circumstances must be reported within 10 working days; most changes to your business within 20.

A downgrade. UKVI has found your systems fall short but thinks they can be fixed. You cannot assign new certificates until you complete a chargeable action plan, though existing sponsored staff keep working. Fail the action plan and the licence is revoked.

Certificates already assigned are cancelled, and sponsored employees normally have 60 days to find another sponsor or leave the UK. For a business that depends on sponsored staff, this is an operational emergency, not a paperwork problem.

Yes, and urgently. A change of key personnel is reportable within 20 working days, and in the meantime nobody is filing your reports or watching the SMS. A licence with no active Level 1 User quietly accrues missed deadlines until something forces the issue.

Annually at minimum, and after any significant change — a new site, a merger, a new HR system, or the person who ran the licence leaving. A mock audit run the way UKVI runs one is the only reliable way to find out what a visit would turn up.

No. Nothing on this site takes a payment, and there is no checkout anywhere on it. Every enquiry goes to a person, and any fee is agreed in writing with you before work starts.

An adviser reads it against the eligibility tests and comes back, usually within one working day, with whether you would be granted today, what it would cost, and what needs fixing first. There is no charge for that and no obligation.

We will say so, and tell you what would change the answer. A refusal usually costs you a 12-month cooling-off period on top of the fee, so filing a weak application to save a few weeks is a poor trade.

Yes. Mock audits, reporting, certificate requests, key personnel changes, and responding to a suspension or a downgrade are all work we do. Existing sponsors who have never been visited are often the ones with the most to fix.

Yes. Immigration advice and services in the UK are a regulated activity, and ours are provided by IAA-regulated advisers. Our registration details are published in full on this site. We are not affiliated with the Home Office or UK Visas and Immigration.