The Home Office sponsor licensing unit advertises a processing time of 40 days. In practice, we normally see a decision in three to six weeks. If your business is audited by the Home Office, the decision may take longer.

The application form is completed online and you will be required to send documents to the Home Office in support of the application within five working days of submission.

The documents that a business should send to the Home Office can be split into two categories: 

Documents that confirm your eligibility to be a sponsor. These documents will show that you are a genuine, trading business. The documents will vary depending on the business’s circumstances. However, in most cases a minimum of four supporting documents should be supplied. For example, a private limited company might send in the following:

• Corporate bank statement
• VAT certificate
• Evidence of PAYE registration
• Employer’s liability insurance certificate

It is very easy to get this element of the licence application wrong and for the licence to be rejected. The Home Office will reject an application if the supporting document is not an original or certified in the prescribed manner.

Please get in touch with us with your questions for detailed advice on supporting documents.

Documents to help the Home Office assess your suitability as a sponsor. 

You should provide a cover letter including the mandatory information as detailed in Appendix A to the Tier 2 Guidance for Sponsors document. This information will help the Home Office determine that your vacancy is genuine. 

In addition, you will want to provide any further relevant documents that support your reasons for applying for the licence. For example, if the vacancy you want to fill with a migrant has been created because you are developing a new in-house product, you might consider submitting an overview of that product. 

If the Home Office is not sure about your reasoning for applying for a licence, it may increase the chances of a pre-licence audit.

All sponsor licence applicants must name an authorising officer, a key contact and level 1 user on the sponsor licence application. 

The authorising officer should be the most senior person responsible for the recruitment of migrant workers and will be responsible for ensuring the licence obligations are met. 

The key contact is the main point of communication between the Home Office and the sponsor and this role is often filled by a legal representative. 

The level 1 user will have access to the SMS and will carry out ‘day-to-day’ sponsorship duties, like reporting, through the sponsorship management system.

What happens when the licence is approved?

Your level 1 user will receive a password and user ID that will allow them to access the SMS, an online platform that allows you to assign certificates of sponsorship (work permits) to migrant workers and carry out your sponsorship duties.

The licence will last for four years, unless it is withdrawn by the Home Office, and must be renewed before expiry if you wish to continue the employment of the migrant worker.

Typical reasons for licence refusals or rejections include:

• Documents being in the wrong format. For example, providing a print out of a digital document that has not been certified or providing a document that has been certified in the wrong way
• Failure to show the Home Office that you will meet your tracking and reporting obligations should you receive a licence
• Failure to provide the correct documents to evidence the resident labour market test
• Failure to evidence a genuine vacancy

A certificate of sponsorship is essentially a digital work permit that contains the details of both the migrant worker that you want to employ and the details of the job that they will be doing, e.g. the title, salary and a brief job description. It also confirms whether you have carried out a resident labour market test and involves you making a declaration that the role is genuine.

Shortage occupations are roles where there are not enough settled workers to fill available jobs in particular sectors. The shortage occupation list can be found in Appendix K to the Immigration Rules.

The licence application fee is currently £1,476 for large companies and £536 for a small company. The definitions of small and large are as per the Companies Act 2006.

Part of the assessment that the Home Office undertakes when a company applies to be a sponsor is whether a vacancy has been created purely to facilitate the sponsored worker’s immigration status in the UK. If you are a new business or if you are very small, you will need to provide more in depth reasoning when you apply for the licence in your cover letter to explain how the relevant role has been created and how it will be financed in the future. You are aiming to substantiate the genuineness of the vacancy.

There is no set minimum and indeed some applicants do not provide bank statements in support of their applications. However, if you are a smaller or a newer business, you will likely need to provide a bank statement in support of your application. If your bank balance is low, you will need to provide a more substantial justification for your application to persuade the Home Office of the genuineness of the vacancy.

You will need to look at Appendix J to the Immigration Rules, which contain the SOC codes. The SOC codes group jobs according to their skill level. The current requirement is that the job must be skilled to RQF 6 and so you will only be able to sponsor someone in the codes listed at that level. There are some exceptions to this requirement, so please get in touch with us with your questions.

Please note that from 1st January 2021, the skill level will be reduced to RQF 3. To find out more, read our summary of post-Brexit changes.

You need to pay a minimum of £30,000 where the migrant is 26 years old or above or £20,800 if the migrant is under 26 or is switching from Tier 4 and you are sponsoring the migrant for less than three years. 

Please note that the SOC codes also contain salary information. If the SOC code for the job requires that you pay more than £30,000/£20,800, you must pay the higher amount stipulated in the SOC code.

This requirement will also change from the beginning of 2021 due to the post-Brexit immigration changes. Read the summary of post-Brexit changes here.

Many of the salaries stipulated in the SOC codes are based on 39 hours per week and you can reduce the salary should your role require fewer hours. However, you must pay the minimum of £30,000/ £20,800 regardless of working hours. 

It is important that you meet the minimum salary requirements before you consider sponsoring a migrant, so please get in touch with us with your questions.

The resident labour market test (RLMT) is there to protect the settled work force and is a fundamental part of the Tier 2 sponsorship process as it now stands. It evidences that the employer has been unable to find a suitable settled worker prior to sponsoring the Tier 2 employee.

Please note that the resident labour market test requirement will be removed from 1st January 2021 due to the post-Brexit immigration changes.

The resident labour market test involves advertising the relevant job role in two forms of media, typically a recruitment website like Indeed, and also the Find a Job website (this is normally compulsory unless an exemption applies) for a minimum of 28 days.

It is equally important that you document the recruitment process fastidiously and in compliance with Home Office requirements to avoid the risk of being in breach of licence obligations.

Yes, there are some exemptions to the resident labour market test. The most common exemptions are:

• Post-study work exemptions - for example, where you want to employ a migrant who is on a Tier 4 (General) visa and who has graduated from their UK university you may be exempt
• High earners - where the migrant will earn £159,600 or more, you will not need to run the RLMT
• Jobs on the shortage occupation list

It is critically important that you get the resident labour market test right - please get in touch with us with your questions

It is very common for clients to tell us that they have already advertised the position. The resident labour market test is not simply advertising the role, it involves specific documentary requirements and this is where clients often make mistakes. In these cases, we will need to analyse your advert and recruitment evidence to see if further advertising is required.

It is impossible to say whether you will be audited or not. Those at higher risk for a pre- licence audit are small companies, very young companies and applications where the justification for applying is unclear. 

As detailed below, the Home Office wants to check that your organisation is both eligible (a genuine trading business) and suitable (is offering a genuine vacancy and has relevant HR procedures in place).

The first point to note is that the Home Office can turn up to your premises unannounced so you should notify your staff of this possibility. If the Home Office does notify you first, they will normally call the authorising officer/key contact and follow up with an email confirming the time/date/location of the audit as well as the documents they will want to see. 

The audit is carried out by a compliance officer who will interview the authorising officer or key contact. 

At the audit itself, the Home Office will want to determine:

• Whether your business is a genuine trading entity - common lines of questioning will concern the employer’s business: what the business does, how many clients the business has, what their income is and who is who in the organisational hierarchy
• Whether the vacancy itself is genuine - typical questions will relate to how the vacancy has come into being. For example:
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The compliance officer will normally ask to see your advertising screenshots, all of the shortlisted CVs and your interview notes. 

• Whether your business will be able to meet its obligations under the licence, should it be granted - the compliance officer will want the employer to demonstrate that it is able to meet the sponsor licence obligations. You should, therefore, have HR systems in place that cover the relevant obligations.