Sponsor licence duties

Much of it is ordinary admin, but it runs for as long as the licence is active. Using your sponsor account, you file reports about staff changes and changes affecting the organisation, hold copies of documents, and make sure each person's contact details stay up to date.

Your HR files should show each sponsored worker's immigration status, keep copies of their paperwork, note their attendance, and list their current address and phone number (GOV.UK).

When a sponsored worker shifts to working from home full time, you have to notify UK Visas and Immigration, the Home Office team that manages sponsorship. Splitting the week between home and the office does not count (sponsor guidance).

User accounts on the sponsor system need care too. Level 2 accounts close automatically after 8 March 2027, so before that date someone should review who still has access (GOV.UK).

How long you have depends on the event itself. Worker reports are mostly due inside 10 working days, and anything concerning the organisation itself allows 20 working days (sponsor guidance).

Updating your licence details may need as much as 18 weeks to complete. If that is too slow for you, paying £350 for the priority service speeds it up to 5 working days (GOV.UK).

The Home Office checks that you are keeping to the rules that come with your licence, and it can do this in several ways.

They might ask you to send over documents, come to your site, interview you by video, compare notes with other government departments, or run routine checks with HMRC to confirm your sponsored workers get the pay stated on the certificate (sponsor guidance).

Pay needs special care. Starting on 8 April 2026, each pay period has to include the whole salary required, rather than averaging it out over the year, so even one month of lower pay breaks the rules (KPMG).

A right to work check shows that someone is allowed to work in the UK. You do it before their first day, either with an online share code or by inspecting their original documents (GOV.UK). Sponsored workers are no exception to this.

Keep a copy of whatever you checked for as long as the person works for you, plus 2 years after they leave (GOV.UK). That copy is your protection if it turns out later that the person had no permission.

If the check was not done correctly and the person was working without permission, the civil penalty runs up to £60,000 for each individual (GOV.UK). This is why the check happens before work begins.

A downgrade takes your licence from A-rating to B-rating. The Home Office has found problems but is offering you a route to put them right. While you hold a B-rating, no new certificates of sponsorship, the papers each new worker needs for their visa, can be assigned until your rating goes back up (GOV.UK).

Getting back to an A-rating means working through a Home Office action plan, which carries a fee of £1,579. You have 10 working days from the downgrade to pay, or you lose the licence completely (GOV.UK).

The licence can only be B-rated twice while it is valid (GOV.UK).

Revocation is the harshest result, and its effects stretch beyond your own company. There is no appeal, and a fresh application is only possible once 12 months or more have passed (GOV.UK).

All the certificates of sponsorship you have handed out stop being valid, so any visa application relying on one of them gets turned down (sponsor guidance, Part 3 C10.12).

Your sponsored workers feel it too. Workers who did nothing wrong usually have their permission shortened to 60 calendar days to line up a replacement sponsor or find some other way to stay, and anyone who was part of the problem loses permission altogether (sponsor guidance, Part 3 C10.10).

If you would like support with any of it, check that any immigration adviser you use is registered with the Immigration Advice Authority or belongs to an approved professional body, for example the Law Society (GOV.UK).