Certificate of Sponsorship UK

Fees for a Sponsor Licence

There is a variable fee system in place which charges you based on the size of your business. Organizations defined as medium or large – turnover over £10.2 million, assets over £5.1 million, and more than 50 employees – will need to pay £1,476.

Meanwhile, small businesses defined by having less than these parameters must pay the lower fee of £536. The lower fee also applies to sole traders.

Renewing a Sponsor Licence

Your sponsor license will be valid for four years. After this, your firm will need to renew it to continue to sponsor foreign workers. Note that this process can take three months, so make sure that the application to renew the license has been submitted long before it expires.

You will need to apply for the renewal through the SMS system. In this process, you must give detailed information on the foreign workers that the business currently employs and sponsors.

You may also need to facilitate a compliance visit. In this case, an authorizing officer will visit your firm to make sure that you are abiding by the obligations of a sponsor license and that the information you have provided is accurate.

Undefined CoS

The Undefined Certificates of Sponsorship application process applies for all other visas regardless of whether your prospective employee applies inside or outside of the UK and Skilled Worker visa applications made outside of the UK.

1. You receive an annual CoS allocation from the UKVI.
2. You assign CoS to the prospective hire, and you are charged the fee.
3. The migrant worker uses their CoS to complete their visa application.

Overview

On top of the requirements you must abide by for a license, you must also make sure that the role you are offering fits the requirements of the visa that your prospective employee will be applying for.

On top of the requirements for each visa application, you will also need to make sure that the role pays minimum wage or the standard market rate.

The section below details the key requirements for the most common visa types that require a CoS:

Skilled Worker

The Skilled Worker Visa requires the role to be formally listed as an “eligible skilled occupation.” These roles are of “level 3” skill level in the Regulated Qualifications Framework, which applies for England and Northern Ireland or the equivalent standard in Wales and Scotland. Generally, these roles give a migrant worker substantial responsibilities and will usually come with some management duties.

Global Business Mobility (GBM) Worker

The GMB Worker visa has been designed to help businesses with branches in the UK to bring non-UK workers over temporarily. There are five key types of GBM workers to be aware of, including the following:

• Senior or specialist workers are management or highly proficient workers coming to fulfill temporary duties.
• Graduate trainees may come to the UK temporarily to help train for a senior management or specialist position.
• UK expansion workers come to the UK to help a business with its initial expansion into the UK.
• Service suppliers are temporary workers helping their firm to fulfill a contractual service in the UK.
• Secondment workers undertake assignments for a “host” organization under the terms of a secondment agreement.

Scale-Up Workers

The Scale-Up visa allows you to hire foreign workers in roles at least six months long if you are a rapidly growing company.

The government defines a company to be rapidly growing if they have had a growth rate of 20% or higher for the three-year period before they assign a CoS to a new worker. Furthermore, your company needs to have had at least ten employees at the start of this period.

Overview

Once you have assigned a CoS to a worker, it can be adjusted and managed based on changes in circumstances or the expiry of visas. The section below covers the following types of CoS management:

• Renewals.
• Cancellations.
• Transfers.

Renewals

A Certificate of Sponsorship and a working visa will always have an expiry date. This is often five years after it has been issued. While the visa can usually be renewed by the worker, you will need to assign them a new CoS because the document is not extendable.

This process is simple. All you need to do is head over to the SMS system and assign the worker a new CoS with the same process that you followed to assign them the initial CoS.

Cancellations

If you hire the right migrant worker, you shouldn’t have to worry about cancellations. However, sometimes employees and prospective hires will decide they don’t want to come to the UK, leading to the CoS not being needed to apply for a visa. If the prospective employee still hasn’t applied for a visa, you can simply cancel their CoS, and you will be able to use it for a different foreign worker.

However, a CoS will expire if a visa application has not been submitted attached to its number within three months. Therefore, if the expiry period is approaching, it is always worth chasing up your prospective employees so you can remove them from the CoS if necessary.

On the other hand, a CoS will always expire three months after it has been awarded, so you may choose to simply let it expire.

Transferring a CoS

In some cases, your foreign hire won’t stay in the position until the end of their visa period. They may choose to move on to take a position in a different company or return home. Luckily, you will be able to transfer the CoS to a new foreign worker so that you can fill the position.

All you need to do is make sure the foreign worker is registered on the SMS system and then connect them to the position within the system. Do this by going to the “View CoS” screen and then choosing “Transfer.” Then select “Transfer a single CoS” where a drop-down menu will appear, and you can select the name of the new hire. You will be notified once the transfer has been successful.