Overview

UK employers have to be granted a sponsorship licence by the UKVI Home Office before they can employ workers from outside the UK under the points-based visa system.  From January 2021, this includes workers from the EU that are not already in the UK that have settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. 

Employers who do not have a sponsorship licence will be unable to hire new workers from outside the UK, or extend visas for current sponsored employees.

All sponsors have to be fully aware of their immigration duties and have processes and systems in place to both meet these requirements and to maintain records as evidence of their compliance.

If applying for your first licence, your application will need to show you can meet these duties from day one. If the Home Office has concerns about your ability to comply, your application could be refused and you may lose your application fee.

Licence holders can be subject to Home Office investigation at any time. Where there are allegations of compliance breaches, the Home Office has powers to suspend and revoke sponsor licences, impacting your ability to hire workers from abroad and impacting your sponsored workers’ permission to stay and work in the UK.

Sponsorship licence: employer considerations

To apply for a sponsorship licence, employers must prove they are a genuine organisation operating lawfully in the UK. You have to show you are aware of and capable of carrying out your visa sponsorship duties, with the appropriate HR and recruitment systems and practices in place.

Your key personnel as named on your sponsor application must be honest, dependable and reliable. The Home Office will conduct background checks on all nominated individuals to verify their eligibility for the roles.

If you are applying for a sponsorship licence you will also have to evidence that you are offering genuine employment that meets the skill level and appropriate rates of pay for the position and applicant.

Sponsorship License Process

The application process is broken down into the following stages:

• Sponsorship Licence
• Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS)
• General or Intra Company Transfer Visa

Sponsorship Licence

The first part of the sponsor license application process is making the online application.  This is where you provide details of your company and the corporate structure, if they have more than one branch in the UK. The application fee is also paid online in order for it  to be submitted.

The second part of the process is for the supporting documents to be submitted to the Sponsor Licence team. This must be completed within 5 days of the online form being submitted.

Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS)

Once the company has been registered as a licenced sponsor, you must then apply Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) which will then be assigned to the respective employee.

These are a virtual document managed by the Sponsor Licence Holder.

The CoS contains all objective data to do with the position the employer seeks to fill, including the chosen SOC code, the job title, job description and salary on offer.

A sponsor would need to ‘assign’ a CoS to any non-EU worker they wish to hire, which the individual would then use to support their visa application which is dealt with direct on the Sponsor Licence.

Skilled Worker Visa

Once the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) has been issued, the prospective employee will then need to make the Skilled Worker Visa application.

This is the final stage of the process and once granted, and the employee will then be legally allowed to work for the company in the UK.

Application Process and ongoing Responsibilities

The licence application is made online, and supporting documentation must be supplied within five days of the application being submitted.

Following the receipt of supporting documents, the organisation may then be subject to a compliance visit from UKVI, who will assess whether or not to grant the sponsorship licence.

Companies will also be required to comply with the illegal working requirements which states that all non-EU employees are required to provide documentation that proves their right to work before being employed by a UK company and copies of this information must also be retained by the employer.

If you are successful in your application, focus will need to shift to managing the sponsor licence. It is an ongoing demand to ensure all of the compliance duties are met and you are not at risk of breaching the rules.

Key duties will include record keeping, both in relation to the organisation and to all sponsored workers.

Across all visa types, a licence holder must keep a photocopy or electronic copy of the relevant pages of the sponsored migrant’s passport, including those pages which contain personal identity details, leave stamps, immigration status and the period of leave to remain; a record of the employee’s absences; and the employee’s biometric residence permit, contract of employment, National Insurance number, current and historic contact details and any other document required for the visa type.

In addition to record keeping, sponsors are also under a positive duty to act and notify the Home Office of certain changes in circumstances.

In most cases this means updating the Sponsorship Management System (SMS) within specified timeframes. The SMS is the Home Office’s primary source of information relating to your licence, and as such it is expected that the SMS is kept up to date to provide a real-time snap shot of the organisation’s licence and all of its sponsored workers.

For example, employers must update the SMS within 10 working days if a sponsored employee does not turn up to work on their first day, a sponsored employee’s contract is terminated early, a sponsored employee is absent from work for 10 of more days, without permission or there are significant changes in a sponsored contract of employment.

Changes to an organisation’s circumstances must be reported within 20 days, including where a business becomes insolvent, changes the nature of their operations or following a reorganisation or merger. Any changes to a business address or key personnel must also be reported.