Sponsorship licenses

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A sponsorship licence is required to employ anyone from outside of the UK, EEA. This includes unpaid work, like running a charity.

To get a licence, you can’t have:

  • unspent criminal convictions for immigration offences or certain other crimes, such as fraud or money laundering
  • any history of failing to carry out your sponsorship duties

You’ll need appropriate systems in place to monitor sponsored employees. The Home Office will review your application form and supporting documents and may visit your business to make sure you’re trustworthy and capable of carrying out your duties.

The licence you need depends on whether the workers you want to employ fall under either tier
2 or Tier 5

Tier 2 is for skilled workers who you want to employ long-term or permanently. It’s split into:

  • General
  • Intra-Company Transfer – for multinationalcompanies which need to transfer employees to the UK
  • Minister of Religion – for people coming to work for a religious organisation (for up to 3 years)
  • Sportsperson – for elite sportspeople and coaches who will be based in the UK

Tier 5

Tier 5 is for skilled workers you want to employ on a temporary basis.

To work as a sportsperson

Charity Worker

Religious Worker

Government Authorised Exchange

International Agreement

Immigration skills charge

You might have to pay an additional charge called the ‘immigration skills charge’.

You won’t pay the immigration skills charge if the employee you’re sponsoring is on:

  • Tier 4 (Student) visa and is switching to a Tier 2 (General) visa
  • has a Tier 2 (Intra-company Transfer) Graduate Trainee visa
  • will do a job with a PhD-level standard occupational classification (SOC) code

You won’t need to pay the charge for any of your employees dependants.

The immigration skills charge is paid when a certificate of sponsorship is assigned to the employee and the amount is worked out based on:

  • The size of your organisation
  • how long the employee will work for you, using the start and end dates on their sponsorship certificate.

You can sponsor someone if the job they’re going to do has the right rate of pay and skill

Different rates of pay and skills levels are set for various jobs and occupations. There are separate rates of pay and skill levels for:

You will also need to advertise the job you’re offering if it’s not on the shortage occupation list. This is known as carrying out the ‘resident labour market test’.

The advert demonstrates that there are no suitable employees already in the UK and that this is a genuine vacancy.Each advert must be for 28 days and following this it proves that there was no suitable person to fill the vacancy in the UK.

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