UK Sponsor Licence application guide: duties, costs and compliance for employers

A sponsor licence is not a one-off permission. It is an ongoing relationship with the Home Office in which your business takes on the job of policing part of the immigration system, and is judged on how well it does so. Employers who treat the application as the finish line are the ones who lose the licence eighteen months later.

This guide covers both halves: getting the licence, and keeping it.

Do you need one?

You need a sponsor licence if you want to employ anyone who does not already have the right to work in the UK without sponsorship. That includes most non-UK, non-Irish nationals other than those with settled status, pre-settled status, indefinite leave to remain, or an unsponsored route such as a Graduate or dependant visa.

You do not need one to employ someone who already holds a Graduate visa, a dependant visa or settled status — although if you want to keep a Graduate visa holder beyond their permission, you will need a licence to sponsor the switch.

Eligibility: what UKVI is really assessing

There is no minimum turnover or headcount. What UKVI wants to establish is that you are a genuine, lawfully operating organisation capable of meeting sponsor duties. In practice it looks at four things:

1. That the organisation is genuine and operating lawfully in the UK. Companies House registration, business bank account, employer’s liability insurance, HMRC registration, premises.
2. That there is no reason to refuse you — unspent immigration offences, previous revocation within the cooling-off period, civil penalties for illegal working, or an unsuitable person in a key role.
3. That you have HR systems capable of meeting the duties. This is assessed on the papers and, frequently, in person.
4. That the vacancy is genuine. The role must exist, be at the right skill level, and not be created or tailored simply to enable sponsorship.

The application, step by step

1. Choose the right licence type

Most employers need a Worker licence, covering Skilled Worker and Senior or Specialist Worker routes. A Temporary Worker licence covers routes such as Charity Worker, Creative Worker and Government Authorised Exchange. You can hold both.

2. Appoint your key personnel

Four roles must be allocated, and they can overlap:

• Authorising Officer — the senior person responsible for the licence. Must be a paid member of staff or office holder, based in the UK, and cannot be a contractor or an external consultant.
• Key Contact — the main point of contact with UKVI.
• Level 1 User — operates the Sponsorship Management System day to day. At least one Level 1 User must be an employee, not an external representative.
• Level 2 User — optional, with restricted permissions.

Everyone named is subject to suitability checks. A criminal record, an immigration offence, or a history at a previously revoked sponsor can sink the application before the substance is reached.

3. Prepare the supporting documents

You must supply at least four documents from the prescribed list in Appendix A of the sponsor guidance, submitted within five working days of the online application. Which documents apply depends on your sector and structure — a new company, a franchise, a care provider and a charity are all asked for different things. Getting this wrong is a common cause of refusal, and refusal brings a cooling-off period before you can re-apply.

4. Apply online and pay

Item	Small or charitable sponsor	Medium or large sponsor
Worker licence	£611	£1,682
Temporary Worker licence	£611	£611
Priority service (optional)	£750	£750

You are usually a small sponsor if at least two of the following apply: annual turnover of £15 million or less; total assets worth £7.5 million or less; 50 employees or fewer. Charities qualify for the lower fee regardless of size.

5. Expect a compliance visit

UKVI may visit before deciding, and increasingly does — particularly for new companies, care sector employers and businesses in sectors with a history of non-compliance. Visits are often unannounced. The officer will want to see your HR files, your right to work checks, your recruitment records, and to speak to the Authorising Officer about how sponsorship will be managed.

Most applications are decided in under eight weeks. The priority service aims for ten working days, but places are limited and released daily on a first-come, first-served basis.

After the grant: the duties that keep the licence

Once licensed you are rated A, and you take on four categories of duty.

Record-keeping

Appendix D of the sponsor guidance sets out what must be kept for each sponsored worker, including:

• A copy of the passport or immigration document, and evidence of right to work.
• Up-to-date contact details, including UK residential address and telephone number.
• The job description, contract, and evidence of the salary actually paid.
• Evidence of the recruitment process and why the worker was selected.
• Absence records.

These must be produced on request, in some cases immediately.

Reporting

Changes must be reported through the Sponsorship Management System, generally within 10 working days. Reportable events include: a worker failing to start; a worker leaving or being dismissed; absence without permission of more than 10 consecutive working days; a change to the job, salary or work location; and a significant change to your own organisation such as a merger, takeover or change of address.

The ten-day window is short and the clock starts when the event happens, not when HR notices. Build a trigger into your leaver and payroll processes.

Monitoring and compliance

You must run correct right to work checks and repeat them where permission is time-limited. A defective check is not merely a sponsor issue — employing someone without the right to work exposes you to a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per worker for a repeat breach. See our pages on Right to Work Checks and Civil Penalties.

Paying the right people the right amount

Salary must match what is stated on the Certificate of Sponsorship. Where a worker’s pay drops below the threshold — through reduced hours, unpaid leave or a restructure — the sponsorship may no longer be valid. Check before the change, not after.

Ongoing costs per worker

Item	Amount
Certificate of Sponsorship	£525
Immigration Skills Charge — small or charitable	£480 per year (£240 per additional 6 months)
Immigration Skills Charge — medium or large	£1,320 per year (£660 per additional 6 months)

The Immigration Skills Charge must be paid by the employer and cannot lawfully be recouped from the worker. Certain occupations are exempt, including a number of scientific and research codes and higher education teaching professionals, as are workers switching from a Student visa and some Global Business Mobility transfers.

Sponsoring one worker on a five-year Skilled Worker visa as a medium sponsor therefore costs roughly £7,125 in CoS and skills charge alone, before legal fees or the worker’s own costs.

Renewal, downgrade, suspension and revocation

Renewal. The requirement to renew a sponsor licence every four years was removed on 6 April 2024. Licences due to expire on or after that date generally continue until you surrender them or UKVI revokes them. The exceptions are the UK Expansion Worker and Scale-up routes, where a licence lasts a maximum of four years. If you are on either, diarise the expiry — see our Sponsor Licence Renewal page.

B-rating. Where UKVI finds compliance failures that fall short of revocation, it downgrades you to a B-rating and issues a time-limited action plan with a fee. You cannot assign new Certificates of Sponsorship while B-rated. Existing workers are unaffected for the moment, but recruitment stops.

Suspension. If UKVI suspects serious non-compliance it may suspend the licence while it investigates. You cannot assign new CoS, and you normally have 20 working days to respond in writing. That response is the most important document in the process — it is your opportunity to put evidence before the decision-maker before a revocation decision is made. Our Sponsor Licence Suspension page explains how we handle these.

Revocation. Revocation ends sponsorship. Sponsored workers have their permission curtailed, usually to 60 days, and must find a new sponsor or leave. There is no right of appeal — the only challenge is judicial review, on public law grounds, within strict time limits. A cooling-off period then applies before you can re-apply.

The five failures we see most often

1. Right to work checks done late, or done incorrectly — no follow-up on time-limited permission, or a check completed after the start date.
2. Reportable changes missed because the ten-day duty sat with one person who left.
3. Records that exist but cannot be produced — held across personal drives and inboxes rather than a single sponsor file per worker.
4. A genuine vacancy problem — a job description written to fit a candidate rather than a role the business actually needs.
5. An Authorising Officer in name only, unable to explain the organisation’s duties when asked at a visit.

None of these are exotic. They are ordinary HR gaps that carry disproportionate consequences once you are a sponsor.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a sponsor licence take? Most decisions come inside eight weeks; the priority service targets ten working days where a slot is available.

Can a brand-new company get a licence? Yes. There is no trading history requirement, but expect closer scrutiny and a higher chance of a pre-licence visit. Have your documents, premises and HR systems in place before you apply.

Can we sponsor someone already working for us? Yes, provided the role meets the skill and salary requirements and you assign a CoS before they apply to switch.

What if we are refused? A cooling-off period applies, typically six months, though it varies with the reason. Because there is no appeal, the application itself is the only real opportunity — which is why the preparation matters.

Do we need a licence to employ a Graduate visa holder? Not while their Graduate permission lasts. You will need one to keep them beyond it.

Getting help

We act for employers at every stage — first-time applications, compliance audits before UKVI arrives, responses to suspension, and judicial review where a licence has been revoked. If you want an honest assessment of how your systems would look to a compliance officer, a mock audit is usually the most useful place to start.

See our Sponsor Licence Application and Home Office Compliance pages, or contact us to arrange a consultation.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information about the law of England and Wales as at August 2026. Sponsor guidance, fees and the Immigration Rules change frequently, and the right approach depends on your organisation’s circumstances. It is not legal advice and must not be relied on as though it were.