Immigration solicitor for your sponsor licence

Most organisations include a minimum of 4 supporting documents when they apply. You also need to fill three roles for managing the licence, but one person can hold all three. They're called the authorising officer, the key contact and the level 1 user.

The key contact acts as the Home Office's main point of contact for your licence. The level 1 user handles the licence's day-to-day running online. A legal representative based in the UK can be named for the key contact role and later given level 1 user access, which lets your solicitor take those duties off your hands.

Most applications get a decision within 8 weeks. A quicker decision inside 10 working days costs an extra £750. There are a limited number of these slots each day, and they go first come, first served.

Most refusals trigger a 6-month cooling-off period. That's a wait before you may apply again, which is why the first application matters so much. A solicitor can go over your papers before you send anything.

London, Manchester, Birmingham or anywhere else in the UK, it's the same short form and the same firm that handles sponsor licences. Tell them which roles you need filled and when you'd like your first worker to start, and you'll hear back from the solicitor at the email address you use for work.

Immigration advice may only come from regulated advisers. That covers solicitors, barristers, and advisers on the register of the Immigration Advice Authority, the regulator formerly known as the OISC. Solicitors are listed by the Law Society in England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, and this form only goes to a solicitors' firm, so you don't need to check anyone yourself before you send it.

The official GOV.UK guidance suggests confirming an adviser is registered, and what they charge, before you go ahead. Any money paid to an unregulated adviser can't be claimed back. Because your request goes to a solicitors' firm that handles sponsor licences, it lands with a regulated adviser.

The role checker on this site is free and asks for no sign-up. It checks a job against the official occupation tables and tells you the lowest salary you can offer. The cost calculator adds up what you'd owe the Home Office, and it's free to use as well. For a software developer, the usual minimum salary for a new hire is £54,700, or £38,300 for a worker who qualifies as a new entrant under the immigration rules.

You'll pay the solicitor's fees as well as the Home Office fees. One London firm publishes set prices for sponsor licence applications. You pay the Home Office licence fee just once.

Fees vary by firm: another firm, Milestone Solicitors, publishes £3,000 to £4,500 plus VAT for a sponsor licence application.

The one-year total includes the one-off licence fee, a £525 certificate and one year of the skills charge, so it is not a bill that repeats each year. Every extra worker brings one more certificate and skills charge, but the licence fee isn't charged again. Over 5 years with one worker, the totals come to £3,536 for a small business and £8,807 for a medium or large one. Send the short form and the solicitor will reply to your work email about what your licence would cost and how to apply.