What is a sponsor licence rating?

A Skilled Worker sponsor licence rating is mainly used to show how compliant the sponsor is. Sponsors will generally hold an A-rated licence. This means that the licence is fully operational, and no compliance issues have been flagged by the Home Office.

However, your licence can be temporarily downgraded to a B rating if the Home Office identifies that you have failed to meet your compliance duties in some way, for example, you have not reported changes to the company or your sponsored migrants, failed to meet monitoring requirements or hold copies of workers’ documentation as required.

If your licence is downgraded, you will be issued an Action Plan, for which you will need to pay a fee of £1,476, unless you opt to surrender your licence. The Action plan will set out the actions or improvements you need to make to become compliant. The action plan will be time-limited to a maximum of 3 months. If you make the required changes within the time limit, your licence should be restored to an A-rating. Failure to comply with the Action Plan will lead to your licence being revoked.

Whilst your licence is B rated, you will not be able to assign Certificates of Sponsorship to new workers, although you will be able to assign them to existing sponsored workers who need to extend their visas. You will also not be able to add branches to your licence, or apply for extra categories of licence, whilst you are B-rated.

This year, the government introduced one other rating category – Provisional rating. This rating does not reflect any compliance failure by the sponsor. It is a category that only applies to the UK Expansion Worker route, and only initially, where the overseas national to be sponsored is also being nominated as the Authorising Officer. Once this individual has been granted a visa, they can request for the licence to be upgraded to an A rating.  

How can we help?

Gherson’s Immigration Team are experienced in corporate immigration, including Sponsorship Licence, Certificate of Sponsorship and Skilled worker visa. 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 don’t 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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