The Sponsorship Management System is where a sponsor licence becomes operational.
It is where Certificates of Sponsorship are assigned, changes concerning sponsored workers are reported, aspects of the licence are updated and access to the sponsorship system is controlled.
That makes the SMS important.
But the greater risk is not usually somebody being unable to find the correct screen.
It is a business allowing an important sponsorship decision to reach the SMS without anybody first asking whether that decision is correct.
A salary has changed, so somebody reports it.
An employee has been promoted, so the Level 1 User updates their record.
A Certificate of Sponsorship is needed urgently, so somebody assigns it.
The system itself cannot decide whether the new salary continues to meet the Immigration Rules, whether the promotion changes the occupation code, or whether the worker is eligible for the sponsorship being assigned.
Those are decisions for the sponsor.
The SMS records and gives effect to them.
That distinction is central to managing a sponsor licence properly.
What is the Sponsorship Management System?
The Sponsorship Management System, usually referred to as the SMS, is the Home Office online system used by licensed sponsors.
Once a sponsor licence has been granted, authorised users can use it for functions including:
- assigning Certificates of Sponsorship
- applying for Defined Certificates of Sponsorship
- managing Certificate of Sponsorship allocations
- reporting specified changes concerning sponsored workers
- requesting or reporting certain changes to the organisation
- managing authorised SMS users
- updating parts of the sponsor licence
- reviewing Home Office messages
The detailed mechanics are set out in a series of Home Office SMS manuals.
For most employers, there is limited value in reproducing those manuals internally.
What matters more is knowing which business decisions should reach the SMS, who has authority to take action and what checks should happen before they do.
The SMS should sit at the end of a controlled process.
It should not be the process itself.
Access to the SMS carries responsibility
The principal day-to-day user of the system is the Level 1 User.
That person can carry out significant activity under the sponsor licence. Depending on the circumstances, they can assign sponsorship to a worker, report that sponsorship has ended, update licence information and request changes from the Home Office.
These are not ordinary administrative permissions.
A Certificate of Sponsorship can form the basis of an individual’s application for permission to work in the UK.
A report that sponsorship has ended can eventually affect that individual’s immigration status.
A change to the sponsor’s own details can affect the Home Office’s understanding of the organisation holding the licence.
Access should therefore be given deliberately.
The question is not:
Who in HR might find the SMS useful?
It is:
Who genuinely needs the ability to take sponsorship action on behalf of the organisation?
“I would treat Level 1 access as authority to act for the sponsor, not simply access to an online portal. The person using the SMS is making entries into the Home Office record. The business should know who can do that, what they are authorised to do and what review takes place before a significant action is submitted.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
The Authorising Officer should remain above the process
The Level 1 User may operate the system, but overall responsibility does not sit with them alone.
The Authorising Officer has senior responsibility for the organisation’s sponsorship activity and the conduct of those using the SMS.
That distinction becomes particularly useful in larger businesses.
The employee assigning Certificates of Sponsorship may be an immigration or HR manager.
The Authorising Officer may be an HR Director or another senior person.
The senior person does not need to enter every sponsored worker into the system personally.
They do need enough oversight to know how the licence is being used.
Current Home Office guidance recommends that the Authorising Officer reviews Certificates of Sponsorship assigned by the organisation at least monthly.
That is a useful minimum discipline.
For a business sponsoring substantial numbers of workers, however, meaningful oversight may require more than periodically looking at a list of CoS assignments.
The Authorising Officer should be able to understand why workers are being sponsored, whether appropriate controls exist and whether issues identified through sponsorship are being addressed.
Do not confuse system access with immigration judgement
This is perhaps the most important principle.
Knowing how to assign a Certificate of Sponsorship does not mean someone has correctly established that the worker should be sponsored.
Before a Skilled Worker CoS is assigned, somebody needs to be satisfied about matters such as:
the proposed job,
the occupation code,
the applicable skill requirement,
salary,
working hours,
the worker’s immigration position,
whether the worker can switch where relevant,
and whether a Defined or Undefined CoS is required.
The SMS then records the result of that assessment.
In some organisations, the Level 1 User may be sufficiently experienced to conduct both stages.
In others, immigration eligibility may be reviewed separately before the Level 1 User is authorised to assign the certificate.
Either model can work.
What should be avoided is a situation in which a recruitment manager sends the Level 1 User a name, job title and salary and the CoS is assigned without anyone having properly tested the sponsorship position.
A Certificate of Sponsorship should have an approval trail
There is no Home Office requirement for every sponsor to create an elaborate internal approval committee.
But a business should know how a Certificate of Sponsorship becomes authorised.
For a smaller organisation, the process may be very simple.
A director and Level 1 User may review the role, worker and proposed salary together before assignment.
A larger employer may have a more structured process involving recruitment, HR, payroll and the immigration function.
The form matters less than the control.
Before the CoS is assigned, the organisation should be comfortable that the information entered into the SMS reflects the employment it genuinely intends to offer.
That includes the job description, salary, hours, work location and relevant dates.
Once assigned, that information becomes part of the sponsorship record against which the employment may later be assessed.
The CoS should therefore reflect the job.
The job should not be reshaped afterwards to justify what somebody happened to enter into the SMS.
The SMS should agree with the rest of the business
A well-managed sponsor should have one underlying version of the facts.
If the SMS says the worker earns £52,000, payroll should not show £44,000 without a legitimate explanation.
If the CoS records a senior engineering role, the employee’s manager should not describe their day-to-day work as mainly administrative support.
If the SMS records the worker’s normal location as London, HR should not have permanently transferred them to Edinburgh six months earlier without the sponsorship position being considered.
The documents do not need to use identical wording.
They do need to describe the same real employment.
This is where sponsor compliance often becomes less about immigration law and more about organisational discipline.
The Home Office record, HR record and payroll record should not develop independently.
Reporting is only as good as the information reaching the Level 1 User
The SMS is the mechanism through which many sponsored-worker changes are reported.
But it cannot identify those changes itself.
Suppose payroll reduces a sponsored worker’s salary.
The Level 1 User cannot report or assess that change if nobody tells them.
Suppose a manager permanently moves a sponsored worker onto a different role.
Again, somebody inside the organisation has to recognise that sponsorship may be affected.
Suppose the worker leaves.
HR may know immediately, but unless that information reaches the person responsible for the licence, the Home Office record remains unchanged.
The real reporting system therefore sits outside the SMS.
It sits in the communication between:
HR,
payroll,
recruitment,
line managers,
senior management,
and the sponsor licence function.
This is why the best sponsor systems are rarely those with the most elaborate immigration procedures.
They are the ones where relevant information moves reliably.
Salary changes should not begin with an SMS report
Consider a sponsored worker whose salary is going to be reduced.
A poor process looks like this:
Payroll changes the salary.
HR discovers the worker is sponsored.
The Level 1 User reports the reduction.
A better process starts earlier.
Before the salary is changed, the business establishes whether the employee will continue satisfying the relevant sponsorship requirements.
It considers whether the change is permitted.
It identifies whether reporting is required.
Only then is the employment change implemented.
The SMS records the outcome.
This distinction matters because reporting something to the Home Office does not make the underlying arrangement compliant.
A correctly submitted report can still describe an employment arrangement that breaches the sponsorship requirements.
The same principle applies to changes in duties, hours and other significant conditions.
Promotions deserve the same discipline
Sponsored employees can progress.
There is nothing in the sponsorship system that requires a Skilled Worker to remain professionally static.
But a promotion can mean different things.
One employee may receive a more senior title while remaining within substantially the same occupation.
Another may move into a genuinely different function.
The first may be manageable through the existing sponsorship framework.
The second may require a new Certificate of Sponsorship and immigration application before the new role begins.
The SMS does not determine which situation exists.
The sponsor does.
That analysis should happen before the promotion becomes effective.
Work location illustrates the same point
Modern working patterns are fluid.
Employees work from home, move between offices and spend time at client locations.
Some changes to normal working arrangements need to be reported.
Others do not.
Ordinary hybrid working is not necessarily the same as permanent remote work.
A temporary visit to another branch is not necessarily the same as changing the worker’s normal work location.
Again, the important work happens before the system entry.
What is the worker’s actual arrangement?
Has it changed materially?
Is the change reportable?
The SMS is then used to communicate the answer where required.
Changes to the sponsor itself need equal attention
The SMS is not concerned only with workers.
The sponsor’s own information must remain current.
A business may move office.
Its Authorising Officer may leave.
Its ownership may change.
It may acquire a branch.
Its name may change.
It may enter a corporate transaction.
Some of these matters can be managed as changes to the existing licence.
Others are more significant.
A change in direct ownership, for example, can require a new sponsor licence rather than a simple update to the existing one.
This is another reason the system should not be used mechanically.
Being able to find a field labelled “change organisation details” does not answer the legal question of whether the current licence can continue.
For significant corporate events, the sponsorship consequence should be established first.
More than one SMS action may follow from the same event
An organisational change can affect several parts of the licence.
Suppose the business moves its head office.
The organisation’s address changes.
The Authorising Officer may work at the same address.
So may the Key Contact.
Other SMS users may also have information linked to the old location.
A sponsor should not assume that changing one organisational field automatically deals with every connected sponsorship record.
Similarly, if an employee leaves and that person is both the Key Contact and a Level 1 User, their departure may require more than one action.
This is a small point, but it illustrates why licence management should be reviewed as a whole rather than as isolated system tasks.
SMS security is now part of sponsor governance
The Home Office has tightened SMS security during 2026.
Mandatory multi-factor authentication is being rolled out across the system.
For organisations granted a sponsor licence from 9 September 2026, MFA applies, with wider implementation across existing accounts.
The Home Office has also reinforced that SMS credentials are personal.
Passwords and multi-factor authentication passcodes must not be shared.
That should bring an end to arrangements such as:
“HR has one sponsor login.”
“The password is kept in the department’s shared folder.”
“Another employee logs in as the Level 1 User when they are away.”
Those practices may be convenient.
They are not consistent with the way the Home Office expects SMS access to be controlled.
Where two people genuinely need access, each should have appropriate authorised access in their own name.
Level 2 Users are being phased out
From 9 September 2026, sponsors can no longer appoint new Level 2 Users.
Existing Level 2 Users are being phased out and need to be converted to Level 1 Users where eligible or deactivated by 8 March 2027.
For organisations designing their sponsorship governance now, that simplifies the position.
The focus should be on deciding which individuals genuinely require Level 1 access and maintaining proper control over those users.
This is a useful moment for existing sponsors to review old access arrangements rather than simply convert everybody automatically.
A person having historically held Level 2 access does not necessarily mean they now require Level 1 permissions.
Inactive accounts can put the licence at risk
Another recent development concerns SMS users who do not access their accounts.
The Home Office can treat an SMS account as inactive where the user has not accessed it for 12 months or more.
The current guidance recommends that a Level 1 User logs in at least once a month.
This should not be treated merely as a technical rule.
A sponsor whose only Level 1 User has not looked at the system for a year may have a wider governance problem.
Who has been reading Home Office messages?
Who has been checking the licence details?
Who would make an urgent report?
Who knows whether the account still works?
If the inactivity process ultimately leaves the organisation without an active Level 1 User, the Home Office can suspend the licence. Failure to appoint an eligible replacement within the required period can then lead to revocation.
For a sponsor that uses its licence infrequently, periodic access is therefore still important.
A Level 1 User leaving should trigger a sponsorship handover
People leave organisations.
The risk arises when access leaves with them.
Before an employee with SMS responsibility departs, the sponsor should know:
what role they hold under the licence,
whether they are the sole Level 1 User,
what sponsorship activity is outstanding,
whether another eligible user needs to be added,
what information needs handing over,
and whether their other Key Personnel roles also need replacement.
This should sit within the organisation’s normal leaver process.
It should not depend on somebody in HR remembering six weeks later that the employee happened to manage the sponsor licence.
For a small business where one person holds several sponsor roles, the issue is even more important.
External advisers can support the process, but the sponsor remains responsible
An eligible UK-based representative can, in appropriate circumstances, have a role in managing sponsorship and may be appointed as an additional Level 1 User after the licence has been granted.
That can be useful.
An adviser familiar with the sponsor regime may help assess proposed sponsorship, make appropriate SMS submissions and identify where a worker or organisational change has immigration implications.
But professional support does not remove sponsor responsibility.
The adviser does not ordinarily know that payroll changed a worker’s salary unless the business tells them.
They do not know that a sponsored worker has stopped attending work unless somebody reports it internally.
They do not know that directors have agreed a corporate restructure unless immigration is brought into the conversation.
Outsourcing an SMS function therefore works best where responsibility is divided clearly.
The business owns the facts.
The adviser helps determine their immigration consequence.
“External support can reduce technical risk, but it cannot replace internal ownership. We can advise on what a salary change means for sponsorship. We cannot know the salary changed unless the business has a process that brings that information to us. Sponsor compliance still begins inside the organisation.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
The Home Office manuals should be used for mechanics, not judgement
The Home Office publishes detailed SMS manuals.
They are useful.
If the question is which menu to select, how to submit a particular request or where a function sits in the system, the manual should ordinarily be the starting point.
A professional adviser adds value somewhere else.
The harder questions tend to be:
Should this change be reported?
Can this promotion remain within the existing sponsorship?
Is a new immigration application required?
Is this salary reduction permissible?
Does this corporate transaction require a new licence?
Should the organisation assign this CoS at all?
Those are not navigation questions.
They are sponsorship questions.
Keeping that distinction clear avoids turning sponsor management into clerical administration.
A sensible SMS control structure
For many businesses, the system does not need to be complicated.
What matters is having a few controlled stages.
Before a Certificate of Sponsorship is assigned, somebody confirms the sponsorship assessment.
Before a material employment change is implemented, somebody checks whether immigration is affected.
When a reportable event occurs, the Level 1 User receives the information quickly enough to act.
The Authorising Officer retains oversight.
SMS users have their own secure access.
Outstanding Home Office requests are monitored.
Important SMS actions have a basic internal record explaining what was done and why.
That is enough to create a considerably stronger control environment than simply giving an experienced HR employee the login details and expecting them to manage sponsorship from there.
What should a sponsor periodically review?
A proportionate review might ask:
Who currently has SMS access?
Do they still need it and remain eligible?
Who is the Authorising Officer?
Are they still genuinely exercising oversight?
When was the system last accessed?
Are Home Office messages being reviewed?
What Certificates of Sponsorship have recently been assigned?
Were they properly authorised?
What worker changes have occurred?
Were the immigration consequences considered?
Has the organisation itself changed?
Address, ownership, branches, Key Personnel and corporate structure should all be considered.
Are any Home Office requests outstanding?
Some changes require supporting evidence or further approval.
These are management questions.
They are more useful than simply asking whether the SMS password still works.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Sponsorship Management System?
The SMS is the Home Office online system used by licensed sponsors to manage key aspects of their sponsor licence, including Certificates of Sponsorship, worker reporting, licence changes and authorised users.
Who should have access to the SMS?
Access should be limited to eligible people who genuinely need it.
The principal operational role is the Level 1 User.
The number of Level 1 Users should reflect the size and needs of the organisation while maintaining appropriate control and continuity.
Can employees share an SMS login?
No.
SMS credentials and multi-factor authentication passcodes are personal and should not be shared.
Does the Authorising Officer automatically have SMS access?
No.
An Authorising Officer who also needs to use the SMS must hold the appropriate user role.
Can an immigration adviser manage the SMS?
An eligible representative can potentially be appointed as an additional Level 1 User once the sponsor licence has been granted.
The organisation remains responsible for actions taken under its licence.
How often should the SMS be checked?
The Home Office currently recommends that a Level 1 User accesses the system at least once each month.
Regular access also allows the organisation to review messages and confirm that the licence remains under active management.
What happens if the only Level 1 User leaves?
The organisation needs to restore appropriate Level 1 access.
Where nobody with Level 1 access remains, the sponsor may need to use the Home Office change-of-circumstances process rather than managing the change directly through SMS.
The position should be addressed promptly.
The SMS should record considered decisions
The Sponsorship Management System is an important part of holding a sponsor licence.
It should not dominate how the licence is managed.
The real decisions happen before somebody logs in.
Does this person qualify for sponsorship?
Is this the right occupation code?
Can the salary change?
Does the promotion affect the worker’s immigration permission?
Is the work-location change reportable?
Can the existing sponsor licence continue after the corporate transaction?
Once those questions have been answered, the system becomes what it should be: the mechanism through which the organisation gives effect to a considered sponsorship decision.
That is the distinction worth preserving.
A business does not demonstrate good sponsor management because somebody knows every function in the SMS.
It demonstrates good sponsor management when the information entered into the system is accurate, the people using it are appropriately controlled and the organisation understands the consequences of the actions taken through its licence.
Reviewing how your sponsor licence is managed?
If your organisation holds a sponsor licence and there is a particular concern about SMS access, Certificate of Sponsorship controls, reporting or the way sponsorship is managed internally, you can request a Free Case Assessment.
Tell us about the issue you are dealing with and the sponsorship position involved.
We can then consider whether Knightsbridge Immigration can assist.
