Immigration lawyers in London for sponsor licences

A sponsor licence lawyer prepares and checks your Home Office application, then helps when something goes wrong once you hold a licence. London employers usually come with one of these jobs:

• a first licence application, or adding a route to a licence you already hold
• a refused application, where the refusal letter gives the reason
• setting up the records and checks the Home Office expects you to keep
• a suspended or revoked licence, where the deadlines are short
• assigning a certificate of sponsorship (CoS), the electronic record that lets a named worker apply for a visa

We pass your question to one regulated firm, and that firm replies to you directly. Our immigration solicitor guide covers how that works in more detail.

No. You apply through an online form, then email the submission sheet and supporting documents to the address the Home Office gives you (GOV.UK). A solicitor can draft, check and send all of that from anywhere in the UK. The firm this site works with is not presented as a London firm, and for this work it does not need to be one.

The part that happens in person is a Home Office compliance check. Officers come to your own premises, with or without notice, and you must let them into any site you control (sponsor guidance Part 3, C7.9 and C7.10). If your sponsored staff are placed at a client's office, it is your job to warn that client a visit could happen there. Getting your records ready for a visit can be done remotely.

The Home Office register of 22 October 2026 lists 36,656 organisations with the town name London, out of 127,744 sponsors in the UK, about 29% of the total (GOV.UK register). Of those London sponsors, 35,304 can sponsor Skilled Workers. Employers whose address gives a borough as the town, such as Croydon, are counted under that name instead.

Two routes are far more common in London than elsewhere. 5,657 London organisations hold the Senior or Specialist Worker route, which brings an existing employee of your group to its UK branch; that is more than half of the 10,351 sponsors on the route nationally. 772 hold the Creative Worker route, used for people such as actors, dancers, musicians and film crew (GOV.UK), close to half of the 1,574 in the UK. You can look up any London employer with our sponsor register search.

There is no London rate for sponsored jobs. For most Skilled Worker roles, GOV.UK sets one national minimum: £41,700 a year or the going rate for the occupation, whichever is higher, with separate rules for some health and education jobs (GOV.UK). A role in Camden is tested against the same figure as the same role in Carlisle. Our role checker shows the figure for an occupation code.

Each firm sets its own fee; neither the Home Office nor your postcode fixes it. Two firms that publish prices quote £3,000 to £4,500 plus VAT to prepare a licence application, and your business pays the Home Office licence fee on top (see the cost calculator). The firm that answers your form will give you its own figure, so get it in writing before work starts.

A first reply is more useful when the firm can see your business and the role. For a Skilled Worker licence, the Home Office wants details of every job you plan to fill (Appendix A), so gather:

• your company number and the date you started trading in the UK
• a hierarchy chart showing owners, directors, partners and board members
• for each role: job title, occupation code, main duties, weekly hours and pay
• how you found the worker, if you already have someone in mind
• your PAYE employer reference and VAT number