Sponsoring a Skilled Worker sounds fairly straightforward when it is reduced to a sentence: Get a Sponsor Licence, give the employee a Certificate of Sponsorship and they apply for their visa. Technically, that is the basic journey. In practice, there is quite a lot sitting between those three steps. The employer needs the correct Sponsor…
Receiving a Sponsor Licence refusal is frustrating. For some businesses, it is more than frustrating. The company may already have identified the worker it wants to sponsor. That worker might be approaching the expiry of a Graduate visa or another form of immigration permission. Recruitment plans may already have been made around the assumption that…
One of the most common concerns we hear from newer companies is: “Are we too small or too new to get a Sponsor Licence?” Usually, the answer is no. There is no general rule saying a business must have traded for several years, employ a large workforce or have a huge turnover before it can…
For years, one of the standard rules of sponsorship was simple: A Sponsor Licence lasted for four years. Before it expired, the employer had to renew it. Miss the renewal and the consequences could be serious. That rule changed on 6 April 2024. For most Worker and Temporary Worker sponsors, the Home Office removed the…
A Sponsor Licence revocation is one of the most serious things that can happen to a licensed sponsor. Once the Home Office revokes the licence, the organisation loses its ability to sponsor workers. Its details are removed from the public register, Certificates of Sponsorship become invalid and the immigration position of existing sponsored workers can…
A Sponsor Licence suspension letter is not the sort of correspondence any employer wants to receive. By the time the Home Office suspends a licence, it has usually identified concerns serious enough to justify stopping the organisation from carrying out certain sponsorship activity while the position is investigated or reviewed. That does not necessarily mean…
A Home Office email telling you that your business has been selected for a Sponsor Licence compliance visit has a remarkable ability to make an otherwise normal working day considerably more interesting. For some employers, the immediate reaction is: Why us? For others: What are they going to ask? And quite often: Where exactly did…
Getting a Sponsor Licence is one thing. Keeping it is another. Once a business becomes a licensed sponsor, the Home Office expects it to keep certain information about its sponsored workers and the organisation itself up to date. Some changes need to be reported. Some do not. Some need to be reported within 10 working…
One of the most common questions employers have after getting a Sponsor Licence is: “Do I need a Defined or Undefined Certificate of Sponsorship?” The names do not exactly help. Both are Certificates of Sponsorship. Both are used by licensed employers. Both ultimately support a worker’s visa application. But they are not interchangeable. For Skilled…
If your business has already identified somebody it wants to sponsor, one question usually becomes more important than almost everything else: How long is this going to take? This becomes particularly important where the person is already working for you on another visa. Perhaps they are on a Graduate visa that expires in a few…