You applied for a sponsor licence to hire an individual from overseas and have now made it to the last stage: the optional pre-licence priority service to speed up the decision process.
It can take around 8 weeks to get a decision on your sponsor licence application. If you require faster processing time, there is pre-licence priority service available where your application will be considered in 10 working days.
The following routes are not eligible for priority service: GBM UK Expansion Worker, GBM Service Supplier, GBM Secondment Worker, Scale-up Worker, Government Authorised Exchange, International Agreement and Seasonal Worker.
If you are in an eligible route, you must also have:
- Applied for a sponsor licence in an eligible route
- Paid both the application and priority service fees
- Sent the submission sheet and all necessary documents
- Within 5 working days of paying priority if you are submitting with your application; or,
- If adding priority service to an already submitted application, you must have already submitted the documents, but your application must not be in progress.
The 10 working days are calculated from the next working day from the date of payment, excluding bank holidays. The request for pre-priority must be submitted between 9:00am to 23:59pm Monday-Friday, but there are only 30 allocations per day. Unfortunately, it is a ballot system which operates on a first come firt serve basis, and you must keep trying until you receive the prioritisation, but there is no guarantee of ever obtaining it.
However, if you have not submitted all mandatory and supplementary documents by the deadline, or you fail to respond to a request for further information, or if further checks are required to assess your case, your application could be delayed, and you will not receive a refund for the priority service fee.
The pre-licence priority service fee is £500 and will only be eligible for refund if your consideration is delayed due to reasons outside of the normal case working process, e.g. technical error.
How Gherson can assist
Gherson’s Immigration Team are highly experienced in advising on UK visa matters. 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 X, Facebook, Instagram, 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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