How long does it take to add a branch to my sponsor licence?

An application to add a branch to a Skilled Worker or Global Business Mobility licence is one of the more frequent change requests made by sponsors.

A request of this type is needed if you have opened new premises, or if you hadn’t previously included all of your locations under your licence because you hadn’t previously foreseen the need for sponsored employees to work at those sites. A branch can also be a separate legal entity, as long as it’s linked to the sponsor by majority ownership or control. You may, therefore, want to add a branch if you have acquired a company and want sponsored employees to work for this subsidiary.

If you are adding a new location or company to your sponsor licence, you will not be able to sponsor anyone to work at that location or for that company until the request has been processed. Therefore, it is important to know how long it will take to get this request processed.

The Home Office service standard for processing this type of request is up to 18 weeks. In the past, the Home Office was generally much quicker than this, but recently we have found applications taking at least 4 months. Unlike certain other requests, e.g. appointing a new Authorising Officer or Level 1 user, there is no priority option available to speed up the process.

It is also important that you submit all of the required information to support your request, otherwise you may find that you wait 18 weeks only to be told that your request has been rejected and you need to resubmit and wait again.

How Gherson can assist

Gherson’s Immigration Team are highly experienced in dealing with all aspects of Skilled Worker applications. If you have any questions arising from this blog, please do not hesitate to contact us for advice, send us an e-mail, or, alternatively, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to stay-up-to-date.

The information in this blog is for general information purposes only and does not purport to be comprehensive or to provide legal advice. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the information and law is current as of the date of publication it should be stressed that, due to the passage of time, this does not necessarily reflect the present legal position. Gherson accepts no responsibility for loss which may arise from accessing or reliance on information contained in this blog. For formal advice on the current law please do not hesitate to contact Gherson. Legal advice is only provided pursuant to a written agreement, identified as such, and signed by the client and by or on behalf of Gherson.

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