Starting April 6, the obligation for the United Kingdom work visa sponsor licenses to be renewed every four years will be lifted following the UK Home Office’s decision to extend the renewal period to ten years.
Based on the new changes, expiring sponsor licenses will automatically be extended for ten years, thus abolishing the requirement for future renewals, VisaGuide.World reports.
UK Home Office’s new decision is expected to bring significant relief for expatriates and their employers in the United Kingdom.
A sponsor license is needed for local businesses to employ persons to work in the UK from outside this territory, including EU, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland citizens who reached the UK after December 31, 2020.
However, a license to sponsor certain groups is not needed, including Irish citizens, those with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, and those with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, among others, as confirmed through a statement by the UK’s government.
Following the new rules, sponsors with valid licenses are not required to take any action after their licenses are automatically included in this extension.
The previous system obliged sponsors to submit applications 90 days before the expiry date, with the fees varying from £536 to £1,476 depending on how big the organization is and its charity status. In addition, processing times for renewals could stretch up to eight weeks.
UK’s Home Office said it would contact sponsors who have already started the renewal process in order to arrange the refund of their application fee. In order to verify their license expiry date, sponsors can check the license expiration date through the “License Summary” section of the online Sponsorship Management System (SMS).
Stricter Controls on Work Migration Pathways
Previously, the UK’s government announced new changes for the Skilled Worker route that are set to become effective in April of this year.
Among the new changes is increasing salary requirements for those entering the UK through the Skilled Worker route, from £26,200 to £38,700.
In December 2023, Home Secretary James Cleverly revealed the changes in the House of Commons, stressing that working visas must now earn a total of £38,700. Back then, Cleverly said that the government aimed to reduce net annual immigration by 300,000 in the following years, in spite of the fact that a timetable in this regard had not been announced.
Statistics from the Migration Observatory revealed that in 2023, the Office for National Statistics revised the estimate of net migration for the year ending December 2022 upwards by 23 percent or a total of 139,000, while the net migration in the year ending June 2023 was 672,000.