How to apply for a UK sponsor licence

A sponsor licence lets you employ someone who does not already have the right to work in the UK, on a work route such as Skilled Worker. The application form is not the hard part. What decides it is whether the role is eligible, who you name in the three mandatory roles, and whether the Home Office believes you can keep the records once the licence is granted.

First: is the job actually eligible?

Since 22 July 2025 a Skilled Worker role has to sit at RQF level 6 — graduate level — unless the occupation appears on one of the Home Office exception lists. The salary then has to clear two separate tests: the going rate for the occupation code, and the general threshold, which is £41,700 for Certificates of Sponsorship assigned on or after that date. Lower thresholds apply to new entrants, to health and care roles, and to jobs paid on national pay scales.

If the role fails on skill level or salary, no licence will fix it. Work this out before you spend anything, because it is the single most common reason employers abandon the process halfway through.

The three people you must name

• Authorising Officer — the senior person responsible for everything done under the licence. Must be your own employee or an office holder, not an external adviser.
• Key Contact — the main point of contact with UK Visas and Immigration. This one can be a UK-based representative.
• Level 1 User — runs the Sponsorship Management System day to day. Must be an employee, director or partner, and a settled worker apart from limited exceptions.

All of them must be based in the UK, hold a National Insurance number, and pass suitability checks. Unspent convictions, a previous licence revocation and immigration offences all count against the application at this point, so establish who is clean before you put a name on the form.

Level 2 Users can no longer be appointed as of 9 September 2026, and existing Level 2 Users must become Level 1 Users or be deactivated by 8 March 2027. Build your SMS access around two Level 1 Users from the start.

Documents

Appendix A of the sponsor guidance lists what is acceptable, and most organisations are expected to provide four documents. The usual set proves that the organisation exists and trades: a business bank account with a UK bank regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, employer's liability insurance of at least £5 million from an authorised insurer, evidence of your PAYE and Accounts Office references, and whichever of VAT registration, audited accounts or sector registration applies to you.

The documents go in within five working days of submitting the application, as PDF, JPEG or PNG files with descriptive names of 25 characters or fewer. Late or illegible documents are refused on the papers, without anyone asking you for a replacement.

Fees and timing

• £611 for a small or charitable sponsor. You count as small if you are a charity, if you meet the small companies regime, or — if you are not a company — if you employ 50 people or fewer.
• £1,682 for a medium or large sponsor on a Worker licence. A Temporary Worker licence is £611 whatever your size.
• £750 for the pre-licence priority service, which gives a decision within 10 working days. Slots are limited each day and go early.
• Most applications without priority are decided in under eight weeks.

After the licence, each hire costs £525 for the Certificate of Sponsorship plus the Immigration Skills Charge — £480 a year for small and charitable sponsors, £1,320 a year for medium and large ones.

The licence itself does not need renewing. The four-year renewal requirement was removed on 6 April 2024, so a licence now runs indefinitely unless you surrender it or the Home Office revokes it. UK Expansion Worker and Scale-up licences are the exception, at a maximum of four years.

What the decision really turns on

The Home Office is deciding four things: that you are a genuine organisation operating lawfully in the UK, that the role is genuine, that you are suitable, and that you are capable of meeting sponsor duties. A pre-licence visit is possible, announced or not, and the questions are practical — show me a right to work file, tell me who reports a change of salary, show me how this vacancy was advertised.

Applications fail where the Authorising Officer has never heard of the Sponsorship Management System, where HR cannot produce a dated right to work check, or where the job description reads as though it was written around one particular person rather than a business need.

A refusal brings a cooling-off period of at least six months, and longer in some cases. Two weeks spent getting the files and the named roles right is cheaper than waiting half a year to try again.