For most Worker and Temporary Worker sponsors, an A-rating is the normal position.
A B-rating is not.
If the Home Office downgrades a sponsor licence from A to B, it is saying that it has identified compliance failures serious enough to require formal improvement, but not presently serious enough to justify suspension or revocation.
The business remains licensed.
Existing sponsored workers do not automatically lose their immigration permission.
But the sponsor enters a restricted position.
It cannot sponsor new workers. It must pay for and follow a Home Office action plan. It will then face further compliance scrutiny to establish whether the identified problems have actually been corrected.
The current sponsor action plan fee is £1,579.
The action plan runs for a fixed period of three months.
If the sponsor meets the requirements, its A-rating can be restored.
If it does not, the licence can be revoked.
A B-rating is therefore best understood as a temporary compliance status with a required destination.
The sponsor must get back to A.
What is an A-rated sponsor licence?
For most sponsored work routes, an organisation is awarded an A-rating when the Home Office first grants its licence.
That rating reflects the Home Office’s conclusion that the business has the systems required to meet its sponsor duties and can be trusted to act appropriately as a licensed sponsor.
An A-rating allows the organisation to operate normally within the routes for which it is licensed.
Subject to the immigration requirements for each worker and role, an A-rated sponsor can assign Certificates of Sponsorship, recruit new sponsored workers and manage its licence through the Sponsorship Management System.
The A-rating appears on the public register of licensed sponsors.
It is therefore more than an internal Home Office classification.
Workers, recruitment candidates and other organisations can see it.
An A-rating does not mean the Home Office has certified perfect compliance
This distinction matters.
An A-rating means the organisation is currently licensed without the restrictions associated with a B-rating.
It does not mean UKVI has permanently approved every HR process, every sponsored employee file or every future sponsorship decision.
The Home Office can inspect the organisation later.
It can identify new compliance issues.
It can downgrade, suspend or revoke the licence where the relevant circumstances arise.
An organisation that has held an A-rated sponsor licence for eight years therefore still needs functioning compliance systems.
The rating reflects the current licensing position.
It is not immunity from future scrutiny.
How does a sponsor become B-rated?
The Home Office can consider downgrading an A-rated sponsor where it identifies compliance shortcomings that it regards as capable of correction through an action plan.
The current sponsor guidance describes this as generally appropriate for relatively minor breaches.
That wording should not be misunderstood.
A B-rating is still a formal Home Office sanction.
What distinguishes it from suspension or revocation is that UKVI considers the business capable of putting the problem right within a relatively short period.
Examples in the current guidance include weaknesses in record keeping, insufficient control over staff assigning Certificates of Sponsorship, or poor communication between branches that means relevant worker events are not identified.
Other failures can also result in downgrade depending on the circumstances.
The underlying test is not simply whether one document was missing.
The Home Office considers the nature of the compliance problem and the action it regards as appropriate.
More serious or systematic failures can lead directly to suspension or revocation instead.
“A B-rating is not the Home Office saying everything is fine apart from a small administrative point. It means UKVI has identified a compliance failure and is giving the sponsor a limited opportunity to correct it. I would treat the action plan as a formal recovery process, not a suggestion.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
Does the Home Office warn you before downgrading the licence?
Ordinarily, yes.
Where UKVI is considering a downgrade, the current guidance provides for the Home Office to write to the sponsor explaining the proposed action and why it is being considered.
The organisation is given 20 working days from the date of that letter to respond in writing.
That is an important stage.
The sponsor can provide written representations and supporting evidence.
If new evidence arises during that period, the Home Office can write again and provide a further 20 working days to respond to the new material.
There is no ordinary oral hearing.
Once the Home Office receives the sponsor’s response, current guidance says it will notify the organisation of its decision within 20 working days, subject to any further enquiries it needs to make.
A proposed downgrade should therefore not be treated as an inevitable B-rating.
If the Home Office’s concern is based on an incorrect fact or incomplete evidence, this is the point at which the sponsor should address it.
A downgrade response should start with the evidence
The same discipline that applies to suspension responses is useful here.
Do not begin with a generic letter stating that the organisation values its sponsor licence.
Take each concern separately.
What does the Home Office say happened?
Is that fact correct?
Which record supports or contradicts it?
Is the problem isolated?
Does it reveal a wider weakness?
Has anything already been corrected?
The sponsor may find that some concerns are well founded while others are not.
The response should reflect that.
If UKVI says five sponsored workers had outdated contact details, check all five.
Then check the rest of the sponsored workforce.
If the Home Office says the organisation failed to identify unauthorised absence, establish how attendance information actually travels from managers to HR.
If the issue is inaccurate CoS assignment, review who has SMS access and what approval process exists.
The aim is to understand the compliance position, not simply resist the word “downgrade”.
What happens when the licence becomes B-rated?
If the Home Office decides to downgrade, the B-rating takes effect from the date of the decision letter.
The sponsor remains licensed, but its ability to use the licence is restricted.
The most commercially important restriction is that the organisation cannot sponsor new workers while B-rated.
The business also cannot simply accept a B-rating and carry on indefinitely.
A B-rating is expressly described by the Home Office as transitional.
The sponsor must enter a time-limited action plan and make the improvements required to regain an A-rating.
Can a B-rated sponsor continue employing existing sponsored workers?
Generally, yes.
A downgrade does not automatically cancel the immigration permission of workers who are already being sponsored.
Those employees can continue working, provided they retain valid immigration permission and the employment continues lawfully.
The sponsor must also continue complying with all of its ordinary sponsor duties while B-rated.
That includes reporting, record keeping, right to work obligations and managing sponsored employees properly.
A B-rating is not a pause in compliance duties.
It is a period in which compliance is receiving additional Home Office scrutiny.
Can a B-rated sponsor assign Certificates of Sponsorship?
The position is restricted.
A B-rated sponsor cannot assign Certificates of Sponsorship to new workers.
The Home Office does, however, allow limited sponsorship for a worker the organisation was already sponsoring before the downgrade where that worker needs, and is eligible, to make an application for permission to stay.
The number of Certificates available for those extension cases will be controlled under the terms of the action plan.
This distinction can be commercially important.
Suppose a company is B-rated while one of its existing Skilled Workers approaches the end of their immigration permission.
The downgrade does not necessarily mean that employee cannot be sponsored for an extension.
But the business should check the action plan and its permitted CoS allocation carefully.
It must not use those certificates to sponsor new recruits.
Current guidance states that misuse of a CoS to sponsor a new worker while B-rated can lead to revocation.
Can a B-rated sponsor recruit someone new and sponsor them later?
The business can of course continue ordinary recruitment activity.
But it cannot lawfully assign a CoS to a new worker until the A-rating has been restored.
That creates a practical timing problem where a candidate requires sponsorship.
An employer should be careful about promising a sponsored start date while its licence remains B-rated.
The action plan lasts three months, and restoration is subject to the Home Office being satisfied after further compliance checks.
The business cannot safely assume it will automatically be A-rated again on a particular day.
Where recruitment is commercially important, that uncertainty needs to be reflected in planning and communication with the candidate.
What is a sponsor action plan?
The action plan is the Home Office’s formal set of measures the sponsor must complete to return to an A-rating.
It is designed around the compliance failures that caused the downgrade.
The Home Office gives examples such as improving record-keeping systems, strengthening control over people assigning Certificates of Sponsorship and improving internal communication so relevant sponsored-worker events are recognised.
An action plan should therefore be read as a specification of what UKVI expects to change.
The sponsor’s task is not simply to produce evidence that a new policy exists.
It must implement the measures in practice.
If the plan requires improved absence monitoring, the business needs an absence process that actually works.
If it requires stronger CoS controls, there should be a credible approval and oversight structure.
If the problem involved poor communication between branches, the business needs to show how relevant information will now reach the sponsorship function.
How much does a sponsor action plan cost?
As at September 2026, the Home Office fee is £1,579.
This fee is separate from the ordinary sponsor licence application fee and other sponsorship charges.
It covers preparation and supervision of the action plan.
Once the sponsor is notified that it has been B-rated and an action plan is required, it has 10 working days to pay the fee through the relevant function in the Sponsorship Management System.
Ignoring the payment request is not an option if the organisation wants to keep its licence.
What happens if you do not pay the action plan fee?
The sponsor effectively has three choices.
It can accept the action plan and pay the £1,579 fee within 10 working days.
If it is no longer sponsoring any workers, it can choose to surrender the licence in accordance with the process set out by the Home Office.
Or it can do nothing.
Doing nothing has the clearest consequence.
If the sponsor does not pay the action plan fee within the required period and does not validly surrender where permitted, the Home Office will revoke the licence.
A company should therefore make an intentional decision quickly.
The action plan does not begin at some indefinite point in the future.
There are immediate administrative steps.
How long does the action plan last?
Current Home Office guidance sets action plans for a fixed period of three months.
The Home Office considers that period sufficient to correct issues serious enough to justify a B-rating but not serious enough to warrant immediate suspension or revocation.
That means the sponsor has a relatively concentrated compliance programme.
Three months can be adequate for improving processes.
It can also pass quickly where several departments are involved.
If the problem concerns payroll, HR, line managers, multiple sites and SMS controls, the business should not spend the first month discussing who owns the remediation.
Responsibility should be allocated immediately.
Can you finish the action plan early?
Potentially.
Current guidance allows the sponsor to request a compliance check before the end of the three-month period.
That should be approached carefully.
The Home Office specifically says the sponsor should only request an early check where it is certain all action plan requirements have already been met.
Once the early compliance check takes place, UKVI can make the same decisions it would have made at the end of the normal action plan period.
Requesting an early inspection therefore makes sense only where the remediation is genuinely complete.
Wanting to resume recruitment quickly is not, by itself, evidence that the sponsor is ready.
What happens at the end of the action plan?
The Home Office carries out further compliance checks.
There are three broad outcomes.
If the sponsor has met every requirement and the Home Office has no other compliance concerns, the A-rating is restored.
If the original action plan has been completed but UKVI discovers other compliance issues that justify downgrade rather than suspension or revocation, a second action plan may be imposed.
If the sponsor has failed to meet the requirements, or more serious non-compliance has emerged, the Home Office will revoke the licence.
This makes the end-of-plan compliance check important.
UKVI is not simply asking whether the original documents have been produced.
It can consider whether the sponsor now operates compliantly.
What does the Home Office look for when deciding whether to restore the A-rating?
The answer depends on the original action plan.
But there is a broader principle.
The organisation needs to demonstrate change in practice.
Imagine the downgrade occurred because sponsored-worker salary changes were not reaching the Level 1 User.
A credible remediation may involve changes to the payroll process, identification of sponsored workers within HR systems, a requirement for immigration review before certain contractual changes, training for relevant employees and evidence that the new process has actually been used.
A revised policy alone may not establish that.
Similarly, if absence reporting caused the problem, UKVI may want to see whether managers understand the escalation process and whether absence records are being maintained properly.
An action plan is ultimately about restoring confidence in the sponsor’s systems.
Can the business receive a second B-rating?
Yes, but there are limits.
Current Home Office guidance allows a sponsor to be B-rated and subject to an action plan a maximum of twice during any rolling four-year period in which it holds the sponsor licence.
Each action plan can last no more than three months.
If the organisation has already been B-rated twice during the relevant four-year period and the Home Office later finds that it again meets the criteria for downgrade, UKVI will revoke the licence rather than issue a third action plan.
That makes a second B-rating particularly significant.
The sponsor is using the final downgrade opportunity available in that four-year period.
A business that returns to A after its second action plan should therefore treat subsequent compliance extremely carefully.
What if new problems are discovered during the first action plan?
The Home Office is not confined to the issues listed in the original action plan.
If further compliance concerns emerge, UKVI can investigate them.
Where those new concerns are of a level that would themselves justify B-rating, a second action plan can be required once the first is dealt with.
If the new issue is more serious, suspension or revocation may instead become appropriate.
This is why remediation should not be artificially limited to fixing only the line items on the Home Office letter.
A sponsor placed on an action plan should consider conducting a wider compliance audit.
If one part of the system has failed, the business should know whether the same weakness affects other workers or other sponsorship duties.
“If the Home Office has identified one compliance weakness, I would usually want to know what else the same weakness might have affected. Fixing only the example UKVI happened to find can leave the underlying system unchanged. The safer approach is to understand the cause and test the wider sponsor population.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
Can you add new sponsorship routes while B-rated?
No.
During the action plan period, the Home Office prevents the sponsor from adding new branches or a new route to the licence.
This can affect business planning beyond immediate recruitment.
An organisation considering expansion into another sponsored route may therefore need to wait until its A-rating has been restored.
Again, the logic is straightforward.
UKVI is asking the organisation to demonstrate that it can properly manage its existing sponsor responsibilities before expanding the scope of the licence.
What happens to automatic SMS privileges?
A B-rating can also affect how certain sponsorship management changes are handled.
Where the sponsor previously had the ability to replace its Authorising Officer or Key Contact and add Level 1 Users automatically, those automatic provisions are removed during the downgrade.
That does not mean Key Personnel can never be changed while B-rated.
It means the sponsor should expect additional Home Office control rather than assuming ordinary automatic processing will continue.
This is another reason to maintain resilient Key Personnel arrangements before a compliance issue occurs.
Does a B-rating appear on the sponsor register?
Yes.
The sponsor licence rating appears on the public register of licensed sponsors.
A worker or candidate checking the register can therefore see that an organisation is B-rated.
That can have reputational and recruitment consequences even where the licence has not been suspended or revoked.
For a candidate who needs sponsorship, the practical concern is obvious.
A B-rated sponsor cannot currently sponsor them as a new worker.
Recruitment teams should therefore understand what the public rating means before communicating with applicants.
Is a B-rating the same as sponsor licence suspension?
No.
The two statuses are different.
A B-rated sponsor remains on the sponsor register and retains a restricted ability to operate the licence.
It may, within the action plan rules, continue sponsoring qualifying existing workers who need permission to stay.
A suspended sponsor is temporarily removed from the public register and cannot assign any Certificates of Sponsorship while the suspension continues.
Suspension also normally reflects more serious or potentially serious concerns.
A B-rating should not therefore be described to staff as a suspension.
Equally, it should not be dismissed as a harmless warning.
Can a suspended sponsor be reinstated with a B-rating?
Yes.
One possible outcome after a sponsor licence suspension is reinstatement with a B-rating.
In that situation, the organisation must follow an action plan.
The Home Office can also reduce or set to zero the number of Certificates of Sponsorship the organisation is allowed to assign.
Because the representations process has already taken place during suspension, the sponsor is not given another 20-working-day representation period simply because the licence is reinstated at B.
The action plan process begins from there.
Is a B-rating preferable to suspension?
That is not really a useful choice for the sponsor to make.
The Home Office selects the compliance action it considers appropriate.
Broadly, B-rating is intended for problems that UKVI considers capable of correction through a structured action plan.
Suspension and revocation are available for more serious concerns or circumstances where the Home Office considers stronger action necessary.
A business should therefore focus less on which sanction it would prefer and more on preventing compliance failures from reaching any of those stages.
What should a business do immediately after a B-rating?
The first task is to read the decision and calculate the 10-working-day payment deadline.
Then establish ownership of the remediation.
Who is responsible for each action plan requirement?
Which departments need to be involved?
What evidence will demonstrate completion?
Does the issue affect workers beyond those originally examined?
Are any existing sponsored employees approaching immigration expiry and likely to need a CoS during the B-rating period?
Are recruitment teams aware that new sponsorship is temporarily unavailable?
Does senior management understand the consequences of failing the action plan?
The action plan should be treated as a project with a fixed three-month endpoint.
Not a collection of recommendations to deal with when time allows.
A practical action plan approach
A strong internal response usually begins with four stages.
First, identify the cause. Establish why the compliance failure happened rather than merely what UKVI observed.
Second, correct the immediate problem. Update records, processes or systems where appropriate.
Third, test the wider position. Check whether the same weakness affected other sponsored workers or areas of the licence.
Fourth, evidence the improvement. Make sure the business can demonstrate that the new system actually operates.
This approach is more useful than simply producing a new sponsor compliance manual.
If the organisation cannot show that the process works in daily business, the document itself will have limited value.
Frequently asked questions
What is an A-rated sponsor licence?
An A-rating is the normal rating for most Worker and Temporary Worker sponsor licences.
It means the Home Office has granted the organisation unrestricted sponsor status within the routes on its licence, subject to continuing compliance.
What is a B-rated sponsor licence?
A B-rating is a temporary downgrade imposed where the Home Office identifies sponsor compliance failures that it considers capable of being corrected through an action plan.
The organisation remains licensed but faces significant restrictions.
Can a B-rated sponsor hire new Skilled Workers?
It cannot assign a Certificate of Sponsorship to sponsor a new worker until its A-rating has been restored.
Can a B-rated sponsor extend an existing Skilled Worker?
Potentially, yes.
A sponsor can assign a CoS to a worker it was already sponsoring before the downgrade where that worker needs and is eligible to apply for permission to stay, subject to the allocation permitted under the action plan.
How much does a sponsor action plan cost?
As at September 2026, the Home Office action plan fee is £1,579.
How long do you have to pay the action plan fee?
The current deadline is 10 working days after the Home Office notifies the sponsor of the B-rating and requests payment.
How long does a B-rating last?
An action plan is set for a fixed period of three months.
The B-rating is intended to be transitional rather than a permanent licence status.
What happens if I do not follow the action plan?
If the sponsor fails to meet the action plan requirements, the Home Office can revoke the licence.
Can I ask UKVI to inspect us before the three months ends?
Yes.
A sponsor can request an earlier compliance check, but the Home Office advises doing so only where the organisation is certain that every action plan requirement has already been met.
How many times can a sponsor be B-rated?
Current guidance permits a maximum of two B-ratings and action plans during any rolling four-year period.
If the sponsor subsequently meets the criteria for another downgrade within that period, the Home Office will revoke the licence.
Can a UK Expansion Worker sponsor be B-rated?
A UK Expansion Worker sponsor holding a Provisional rating cannot be downgraded to B.
Where such a Provisional sponsor fails to meet its duties or relevant sponsor requirements, the Home Office will consider revocation rather than issuing an action plan.
A B-rating is an opportunity, but a limited one
The distinction between A and B ratings is ultimately about Home Office confidence.
An A-rated sponsor is trusted to operate the sponsorship system in the ordinary way.
A B-rated sponsor has been told that something needs to change before that level of trust will be restored.
The Home Office gives the organisation three months to make that change.
During that period, new sponsorship is restricted.
The business pays for the action plan.
Further compliance checks follow.
If the remediation succeeds, the A-rating returns.
If it does not, the licence itself can be lost.
That makes the most important question after a downgrade quite practical:
What failed in the system that produced this outcome?
If the business understands that properly, the action plan can address more than the immediate Home Office finding.
It can leave the sponsor with a stronger process than it had before the downgrade.
If the organisation treats the action plan as a paperwork exercise, it risks reaching the end of three months with the same underlying problem still in place.
The objective is not merely to change the letter beside the organisation’s name on the sponsor register.
It is to restore a sponsorship system that deserves the A-rating.
Has your sponsor licence been downgraded?
If your business has received notice of a proposed downgrade, has been given a B-rating or is working through a Home Office action plan, you can request a Free Case Assessment.
