Sponsor licences for hospitality and restaurants
Restaurants, hotels, catering groups and kitchens. High staff turnover meets strict reporting deadlines, which is where most licences get into trouble.
What UKVI looks hardest at here
The duties are identical in every sector. What a visiting officer pulls out of your files is not — and in hospitality and restaurants these are the things that get examined first.
Whether the role is genuinely skilled or a re-labelled general kitchen job
Trading accounts and covers against the number of sponsored roles
Right to work checks across the whole workforce, not just sponsored staff
Where hospitality employers get caught
A chef leaving without the departure being reported inside 10 working days.
Job titles on the certificate that do not match what the person actually does on shift.
Multiple trading sites operating under one licence without every address reported.
None of these are unusual. They are the ordinary operating conditions of the sector colliding with reporting deadlines nobody owns.
The deadlines that apply to you
These are the same for every sponsor. Read them against the traps above — most of those are a missed 10-working-day report wearing a sector-specific disguise.
Reporting
A sponsored worker does not start
They fail to turn up on their first day, or never arrive in the UK at all.
A sponsored worker stops working for you
Resignation, dismissal, redundancy, or the contract ending. Report the date and the reason.
Unauthorised absence of 10 or more days
Ten consecutive working days missed with no permission and no explanation you accept.
A significant change to the job
Salary, duties, hours, occupation code or work location changing enough to matter.
A change to your business
Address, ownership, structure, a merger or takeover, insolvency, or a change of key personnel.
Hiring into hospitality and restaurants?
Tell us the roles and where the business is up to. We will come back with whether you would be granted, what it costs, and the sector-specific things a visiting officer would ask you about.