Sponsor Licence for Care Workers

To address skill gaps in the healthcare sector, the UK government launched the Health and Care visa on 4 August 2020 for hiring overseas health workers who meet the Home Office-specified eligibility criteria. The role of care workers and home carers have been included on the Home Office’s Shortage Occupation List since 16 February 2022.

Overseas doctors, nurses and other allied health professionals such as senior care workers, who have been trained to a standard recognised in the UK and have good English language skills, are eligible to apply for a Health and Care visa, which is part of the Skilled Worker route to immigrate to the UK.

However, to be able to apply for a Health and Care worker visa, the eligible overseas medical and care workers will have to be sponsored by a UK employer. This prospective UK employer, in turn, must possess a valid ‘Worker’ sponsor licence to assign certificates of sponsorship (CoS) for the health and care worker subcategory under the Skilled Worker category.

In general, the eligibility criteria and supporting documentation for sponsoring a health and care worker are similar to that of the Skilled Worker sponsor licence. However, there is certain additional information that the UK employer must provide on the CoS, to be able to sponsor an overseas health and care worker. We will discuss this in detail later in this article.

Page Contents

• Purpose of a Health and Care Worker Sponsor Licence
• Eligibility Criteria for a Health and Care Worker Sponsor Licence
• Documents Required for a Health and Care Worker Sponsor Licence
• Additional Information to be Provided in the Certificate of Sponsorship for Health and Care Workers
• Health and Care Worker Sponsor Licence Application Process
• Processing Time for Licence Application
• How Can Total Law Help?
• Frequently Asked Questions

For sponsoring overseas workers on the Health and Care route to the UK, you will need to submit certain supporting documents along with your sponsor licence application.

If your company/organisation is not exempted by the Home Office from submitting business-related supporting documents, you will have to submit at least four documents from the below list along with your sponsor licence application:

• Your latest audited or unaudited account statements. Audited accounts are mandatory if you are obliged to file audited accounts according to the law
• Your liability insurance certificate (of at least £5 million in insurance from an authorised insurer)
• Your Certificate of VAT registration
• Your latest corporate bank account statement
• Evidence of your registration with HMRC, such as your PAYE and accounts office reference numbers
• Proof of ownership (or a commercial rental agreement) for your business premises
• Proof of registration where the company is required to be registered with and/or inspected or monitored by a regulatory body to operate lawfully in the UK

Additionally, you must provide the following information:

• Why you are applying for a sponsor licence
• What are your operating hours
• A hierarchy chart of your company including the owner (if any), director and board members, and the total number of your current employees
• For each job role for which you seek to assign a CoS, please provide the job title and its related occupation code, job responsibilities, where the job sits on your company’s hierarchy chart, the minimum salary you would guarantee to your prospective overseas employee, and the skill, experience and qualifications required for that job
• A list of vacancies in your organisation, for which you seek to assign a CoS
• If you have selected the overseas health professional already whom you wish to hire, please provide proof of how you have identified them
• If you have not advertised the job yet, you will have to confirm how you will identify the most suitable candidate for the job
• If you have already identified a suitable candidate for the job and seek to assign a CoS to them, please provide their full name, date of birth, nationality, current immigration status, current job title and duties, and three months’ payslips, if applicable

Please note that, even if an exemption applies in your case, the Home Office may ask you for further information and additional supporting documents.

UK organisations holding a valid licence to sponsor overseas health and care workers will need to provide additional information on the CoS they are assigning to such workers, or while applying for a Defined CoS that they intend to assign to their sponsored overseas staff.

In the ‘Summary of job description’ field of the CoS, they must provide a brief explanation of how the worker meets the Health and Care visa criteria.

Additionally, private organisations providing health and care services on behalf of the NHS, will also have to include brief information about their contract or agreement with NHS trusts or bodies.

If you have forgotten to include the above information in the ‘Summary of job description’ while assigning a CoS, you must add a ‘sponsor note’ with this information (as applicable) after you have assigned the CoS.

Please note that UKVI may ask private organisations to submit documentary evidence of their arrangements with the NHS.

Moreover, you will have to inform your sponsored workers that they are eligible for the Health and Care visa, to ensure that they are filling up their visa application form correctly.

The application process for a Health and Care worker sponsor licence begins with registering your details online by completing the UKVI Online sponsor application registration. After that, please go to the UKVI ‘Sponsor application log in’ page and start filling up the relevant online application form.

Please arrange for the soft copies of your relevant supporting documents before you start with your application. This is important since you will have to email the soft copies to the Home Office, along with the scanned copies of the submission sheet as received upon the completion of your online application, within five working days of your application. The relevant email ID is provided on the submission sheet.

The soft copies of your supporting documents must be in .pdf, .jpeg or .png format, with descriptive titles of 25 or fewer characters, and must have a good enough resolution so that they are legible.

In case you are required to submit any affidavits or statutory declarations, they must be witnessed by a qualified, independent person, e.g. a solicitor, Notary Public, Justice of the Peace, Commissioner for Oaths, etc.

If you have all your supporting documents and any other necessary information ready with you before starting with the online application process, it will not take more than 30 minutes of your time.

It may take UKVI up to eight weeks to reach a decision on your sponsor licence application for health and care workers.

However, a few sponsor licence applications every day are eligible to be fast-tracked, to get a decision within 10 working days. Please check with the Home Office after the submission of your application if you can fast-track yours. If eligible, you will need to pay an additional fee of £500 to avail this service.

Health and care worker sponsor licence falls under the Worker sponsor licence route. A small or charitable organisation will have to pay £536 while a medium or large sponsor will need to pay £1,476 for a licence to sponsor overseas health and care professionals.

However, if you are a small sponsor with an existing Temporary Worker licence, you can add a Worker licence to the same for no additional charges. A medium or large sponsor will have to pay £940 to add a Worker licence to their existing Temporary Worker licence.