Sponser License Applications

What Is Sponsor Licence?

If you are an employer willing to hire a foreign national who is not a settled worker or does not the immigration permission to work in the United Kingdom, you will need to apply to the Home Office for a sponsor licence.

The type of application you will need to make will depend on the immigration route the overseas worker is seeking to be sponsored to work on. Every licence type has its own specific requirements. Note that EU, EEA, and Swiss nationals arriving in the United Kingdom since 31st December 2020 now need to be sponsored to work in the United Kingdom.

You will need a sponsor licence to employ most overseas workers, including Skilled Workers and United Kingdom Expansion Workers. This includes both non-EU nationals and most citizens of the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland who arrived in the United Kingdom after 31 December 2020.

You will not need a sponsor licence to employ an Irish citizen, a person with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, a person with indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom or a foreign national who otherwise has permission to work in the United Kingdom.

Business across various industries irrespective of the company size can apply for a sponsor license, given they met the specific business requirement and job suitability criteria aligned with the sponsor license category they seek.

What are the Requirements for Sponsor Licence?

To successfully apply for a sponsor licence, you will need to satisfy various general and route-specific requirements.

General Requirements for a Sponsor Licence:

• You are a legitimate organisation operating lawfully in the United Kingdom.
• You are honest, dependable, reliable and are not engaging and have not engaged in behaviour or action that are not conducive to the public good.

To establish that you are a genuine organisation operating lawfully in the UK, you will need to submit several company-related documents. The exact documents you will need to provide will vary depending on the type of organisation and the route(s) you wish to sponsor migrants on.

When assessing whether you are honest, dependable, reliable and are not engaging and have not engaged in behaviour or actions that are not conducive to the public good, the Home Office will look at the history and background of your business, the backgrounds of the Key Personnel named in your application and the backgrounds of any people involved in the day-to-day running of your business.

To evaluate whether you can carry out your sponsor duties and demonstrating your compliance in a timeframe and manner set out in sponsor guidance, the Home Office will look at your current human resources and recruitment procedures to make sure that you will be able to fulfil your sponsor duties.

Route-specific Requirements for a Sponsor Licence:

As an employer seeking to apply for a licence to sponsor an overseas national, you will also need to satisfy various additional requirements that are specific to the immigration route that the overseas national is seeking to be sponsored on.

• You can offer employment which meets the skill level requirement of the Skilled Worker route.
• You can offer employment which meets the salary level requirement of the Skilled Worker route.
• The job(s) you are looking to sponsor is (are) genuine.
• There is a direct employer-employee relationship between you and the worker, and you are not looking to sponsor a role which will involve hiring a worker to a third party to undertake an ongoing or routine role.

Ram & Co Solicitors extends professional help to all our clients who wants to apply for Sponsor Licence in the United Kingdom. We ensure fair and equitable representation, providing professional advice and assistance to make sure the outcomes align with your needs.