One of the first questions we get from businesses considering sponsorship is:
“How much does a Sponsor Licence cost?”
The simple answer is £611 for many small businesses.
The more useful answer is that £611 is only the cost of applying for the licence. It is not the total cost of sponsoring somebody.
Once you start adding the Certificate of Sponsorship, Immigration Skills Charge and potentially priority processing, the overall figure can be quite different. There are then the worker’s own visa costs and Immigration Health Surcharge to consider.
This is where employers sometimes get caught out.
They look up the Sponsor Licence fee, see £611 and naturally assume that sponsorship is going to cost somewhere around that figure.
Then somebody mentions another £525 for a Certificate of Sponsorship.
Then the Immigration Skills Charge appears.
Then there is the visa application.
Then the Immigration Health Surcharge.
By this point, the original £611 has acquired quite a large family.
So rather than simply giving you a list of Home Office fees, this guide looks at what it actually costs a UK business to obtain a Sponsor Licence and sponsor a Skilled Worker in 2026.
How much does a Sponsor Licence cost in 2026?
The Home Office currently charges different Sponsor Licence application fees depending on the size and type of organisation.
From 8 April 2026, the fee for a Worker Sponsor Licence is:
- £611 for a small sponsor or eligible charity
- £1,682 for a medium or large sponsor
For most smaller businesses looking to obtain a Sponsor Licence for the first time, the £611 fee is likely to be the relevant starting point.
The current Home Office immigration fee table can be checked on GOV.UK.
The important word there is starting.
Paying £611 gives your company an application for a Sponsor Licence. It does not give you a sponsored employee.
Once the licence is granted, there are further costs when you actually sponsor someone.
Is my company a small or large sponsor?
This matters because it can make a significant difference to the overall cost.
Many businesses will qualify for the lower small sponsor fee. The assessment is linked to the relevant small company criteria and there are separate provisions for charities and some other organisations.
For Immigration Skills Charge purposes, an organisation will usually be treated as small if it satisfies at least two of the following:
- annual turnover is no more than £15 million;
- the balance sheet total is no more than £7.5 million;
- it has no more than 50 employees.
The current criteria and Immigration Skills Charge rules are explained by GOV.UK.
For a small owner-managed company with eight employees and modest turnover, this will normally be fairly straightforward.
It can become more complicated where there are connected companies, group structures or figures sitting around the relevant thresholds.
It is worth checking properly because the difference is not limited to £611 versus £1,682.
The Immigration Skills Charge is also considerably higher for larger sponsors.
What exactly does the £611 Sponsor Licence fee cover?
It covers the Home Office application for the Sponsor Licence.
That is essentially it.
It does not include:
- a Certificate of Sponsorship;
- the Immigration Skills Charge;
- the worker’s visa application;
- the Immigration Health Surcharge;
- priority processing; or
- professional fees if you appoint someone to prepare the application.
This distinction is important when budgeting.
If you simply want to know:
“How much do I need to pay the Home Office to submit my small Sponsor Licence application?”
the answer is currently £611.
If you are really asking:
“How much will it cost my company to sponsor this employee?”
we need to do a slightly bigger calculation.
Is the Sponsor Licence fee refundable if the application is refused?
Generally, you should not approach the Sponsor Licence application fee on the assumption that you will simply get it back if the application is unsuccessful.
The Home Office fee is charged for considering the application and the refund position depends on what happens to the application and when.
More importantly, the £611 or £1,682 is not usually the biggest cost of a failed application anyway.
Imagine a company has an employee whose Graduate visa is approaching expiry.
The business needs a Sponsor Licence so that it can sponsor them as a Skilled Worker.
If the application is refused because it was not prepared properly, the business may lose more than the application fee. It may lose time, disrupt the worker’s immigration planning and create a much more difficult recruitment problem.
That is why we prefer to establish whether the business, role, worker and documents are suitable before the application is submitted.
Paying the fee should be one of the last steps in the preparation process, not the first.
How much is Sponsor Licence priority?
The Home Office currently offers a pre-licence priority service for eligible applications.
The fee is:
£750
This is paid in addition to the normal Sponsor Licence application fee.
The service aims to provide a decision considerably faster than standard processing, subject to eligibility, availability and the Home Office needing no further investigation.
For a small sponsor, this means:
- Sponsor Licence fee: £611
- Priority fee: £750
- Total Home Office application-stage cost: £1,361
For a large sponsor:
- Sponsor Licence fee: £1,682
- Priority fee: £750
- Total: £2,432
The obvious question is whether paying the additional £750 is worthwhile.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it really isn’t.
Is Sponsor Licence priority worth paying for?
It depends entirely on why the business needs the licence.
Suppose you have identified somebody you want to recruit, but their immigration position means you cannot employ them until sponsorship is arranged.
Or perhaps you already employ somebody on a Graduate visa and their permission is getting close to expiry.
Time suddenly matters.
In that situation, £750 may be a relatively small cost compared with several weeks of delay.
On the other hand, if you are applying because you expect to recruit internationally at some point during the next year, there may be little commercial reason to pay for priority.
We would normally look at the actual timeline first.
There is no point paying £750 simply because a faster button exists.
Priority also does not improve the quality of the application. It simply asks the Home Office to consider it more quickly.
If there is a problem with the application, paying £750 merely gives you the opportunity to discover the problem sooner.
How much does a Certificate of Sponsorship cost?
Once the Sponsor Licence has been granted, the employer normally needs to assign a Certificate of Sponsorship to the worker.
For a Skilled Worker, the current Certificate of Sponsorship fee is:
£525
The Certificate of Sponsorship is often referred to as a CoS.
It is an electronic sponsorship record rather than a physical certificate. The employer assigns it through the Sponsor Management System and the worker then uses the CoS details for their Skilled Worker application.
We have covered this process separately in our Certificate of Sponsorship guide.
For the purpose of costs, however, our small business has now spent:
£611 on the Sponsor Licence
plus
£525 on the Certificate of Sponsorship
which brings us to:
£1,136
And we have not yet reached the largest employer-side charge in many Skilled Worker cases.
What is the Immigration Skills Charge?
The Immigration Skills Charge is normally payable when an employer sponsors certain workers, including many Skilled Workers.
This is separate from both the Sponsor Licence fee and the Certificate of Sponsorship fee.
The employer pays it when assigning the Certificate of Sponsorship.
How much it costs depends mainly on two things:
the size of the sponsor
and
how long the worker is being sponsored for.
For a small or charitable sponsor, the current charge is £480 for the first 12 months and £240 for each additional six months.
For a medium or large sponsor, it is £1,320 for the first 12 months and £660 for each additional six months.
This is where the difference between small and large sponsor status starts becoming much more noticeable.
How much is the Immigration Skills Charge for three years?
Three years is a useful example because it is a common sponsorship period.
For a small or charitable sponsor, a three-year Immigration Skills Charge is:
£1,440
For a medium or large sponsor, the same three years costs:
£3,960
That is quite a difference for exactly the same worker and exactly the same period of sponsorship.
It also shows why simply saying:
“A Sponsor Licence costs £611”
does not tell an employer very much about the true cost of sponsorship.
The licence might cost £611.
Sponsoring the employee is another matter.
How much does it cost a small company to sponsor one Skilled Worker for three years?
We can now put the main employer-side Home Office charges together.
Assume the following:
The business is a small sponsor. It does not already hold a Sponsor Licence. It wants to sponsor one Skilled Worker for three years and the Immigration Skills Charge applies.
The costs are:
- Sponsor Licence application: £611
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525
- Immigration Skills Charge: £1,440
That gives us a total of:
£2,576
That is a much more realistic starting figure for an employer considering its first three-year Skilled Worker sponsorship.
If the business also wants Sponsor Licence priority, add another £750.
The total then becomes:
£3,326
These figures are before any professional fees and before any worker-side visa costs the employer voluntarily agrees to cover.
How much would a large sponsor pay?
Now take exactly the same three-year sponsorship but assume the company is a medium or large sponsor.
The calculation becomes:
- Sponsor Licence application: £1,682
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525
- Immigration Skills Charge: £3,960
Total:
£6,167
If Sponsor Licence priority is also used, the total becomes:
£6,917
That is a substantial difference.
The employee has not changed.
The job has not changed.
The sponsorship period has not changed.
The size of the sponsor has.
For businesses planning to sponsor several workers, this becomes an important part of workforce budgeting.
Do you pay £611 every time you sponsor somebody?
No.
This is one of the more welcome parts of the calculation.
The Sponsor Licence belongs to the organisation. Once it has been granted, you do not normally apply for another licence every time you recruit another sponsored worker.
If the business later wants to sponsor a second Skilled Worker, the £611 licence application fee is not repeated simply because another employee is being sponsored.
You would, however, normally have further worker-specific sponsorship costs.
For a small sponsor sponsoring another worker for three years, this could mean:
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525
- Immigration Skills Charge: £1,440
Total:
£1,965
So once the Sponsor Licence is in place, sponsoring additional workers can be cheaper than the first one.
It is still something the business needs to budget for.
Are there exemptions from the Immigration Skills Charge?
Yes.
The Immigration Skills Charge does not apply in every sponsorship case.
There are exemptions for particular circumstances and certain occupation codes.
The current rules include exemptions for some specified scientific, research and higher education occupations. There are also exemptions that can apply in particular circumstances depending on the worker’s current immigration route and sponsorship history.
This is worth checking carefully.
For a small sponsor looking at a three-year sponsorship, the difference could be £1,440.
For a large sponsor, it could be £3,960.
That is enough money to justify spending a few minutes establishing whether the charge actually applies.
What we would not do is assume somebody is exempt because they previously studied in the UK or because another employee apparently did not attract the charge.
Immigration charges are not particularly impressed by office folklore.
Check the actual circumstances.
Does a Graduate visa holder avoid the Immigration Skills Charge?
Not automatically.
This is a common area of confusion.
A person switching into the Skilled Worker route may or may not fall within an Immigration Skills Charge exemption depending on the specific exemption being relied upon and their immigration circumstances.
The Graduate route and Student route should not simply be treated as interchangeable.
If the business is already employing somebody on a Graduate visa and intends to sponsor them, the Immigration Skills Charge position should be checked as part of the overall Skilled Worker assessment.
This is exactly the kind of issue that is better established before the Certificate of Sponsorship is assigned.
Once the business is at the payment screen, it is a little late to begin researching why the figure is different from what somebody expected.
Who has to pay the Immigration Skills Charge?
The sponsor.
This is important.
The Immigration Skills Charge is an employer cost. A sponsor must not pass that charge on to the sponsored worker.
The current sponsorship rules also restrict employers from recouping certain other sponsorship costs from workers.
This area has become increasingly important following changes to the Sponsor Guidance.
Businesses should therefore be careful with employment contracts containing clauses that attempt to recover immigration costs from sponsored employees.
There is a difference between the worker’s own immigration costs and costs which the sponsorship rules require the employer to bear.
Getting that distinction wrong can create a Sponsor Licence compliance issue.
Can an employer make the worker pay the Certificate of Sponsorship fee?
For Skilled Worker sponsorship, the current rules prevent the sponsor from passing the relevant Certificate of Sponsorship fee and associated administrative costs on to the sponsored worker in the circumstances covered by the Sponsor Guidance.
The same concern applies to the Sponsor Licence application fee and Immigration Skills Charge where the rules prohibit recoupment.
This means an employer should not simply calculate all immigration costs and put a clause into the contract saying:
“If you leave within three years, you owe us everything.”
That approach needs considerably more care now.
Some worker-side costs may be treated differently, but employer sponsorship costs should not be bundled together indiscriminately.
If the business wants to use a repayment agreement, the individual costs and current sponsorship rules should be checked first.
What costs does the Skilled Worker normally pay?
The worker normally has their own immigration application costs.
These can include:
- the Skilled Worker visa application fee;
- the Immigration Health Surcharge where applicable;
- optional priority processing; and
- professional fees if the worker separately instructs someone to assist with their application.
An employer can choose to pay some of these costs for the employee.
Some businesses do this as part of a recruitment package, particularly for senior or difficult-to-recruit roles.
But that is different from saying the employer is legally required to pay every cost connected with the worker’s visa.
The first step is separating sponsor costs from worker application costs.
How much is the Skilled Worker visa application fee?
The Skilled Worker application fee varies depending on factors such as where the application is made, how long the worker is applying for and whether a reduced fee applies to the particular job.
This means there is no single Skilled Worker visa fee that applies to everybody.
The current fees should always be checked when the application is being prepared because immigration charges do change.
The latest Skilled Worker fees are available through GOV.UK’s Skilled Worker costs guidance.
For an employer, the important point is that the visa application fee belongs to the worker’s application stage.
It is not the same as the £525 Certificate of Sponsorship fee.
How much is the Immigration Health Surcharge?
For most adult Skilled Worker applicants who are required to pay it, the Immigration Health Surcharge is currently:
£1,035 per year
For a three-year period, that would normally mean:
£3,105
This can therefore be one of the largest costs associated with the worker’s visa application.
Some immigration routes and applicants are exempt from the IHS, so the worker’s actual route should always be checked.
If the employer has agreed to pay the worker’s IHS as part of the recruitment package, it needs to be included in the business’s overall sponsorship budget.
Immigration Skills Charge and Immigration Health Surcharge are not the same thing
The names do not help.
They sound like two versions of the same charge.
They are not.
The Immigration Skills Charge, usually shortened to ISC, is generally an employer sponsorship cost.
The Immigration Health Surcharge, usually shortened to IHS, is normally part of the worker’s visa application.
For a small sponsor arranging three years of Skilled Worker sponsorship, the ISC may be £1,440.
For an adult worker applying for three years and liable for the IHS, the health surcharge may be £3,105.
Two different charges.
Two different purposes.
Two different people normally responsible for paying them.
It is worth getting this right before somebody in accounts pays the wrong invoice and starts asking why immigration has suddenly cost £5,000.
Does the employer have to pay the worker’s visa and IHS?
Not normally simply because it is sponsoring the worker.
The business can choose to pay these costs.
Many employers do.
It can make the employment package more attractive, particularly where the employee is relocating or the business has actively recruited them for a specialist position.
Other employers pay the sponsorship costs they are responsible for and leave the worker to pay their own visa application and IHS.
The important thing is to agree this clearly at the beginning.
If you tell a candidate:
“We will cover your sponsorship,”
they may reasonably understand that rather differently from:
“We will pay the employer sponsorship charges but you will pay your own visa and IHS.”
Clarity before recruitment tends to produce fewer awkward conversations afterwards.
Can the Immigration Skills Charge be refunded?
In some circumstances, yes.
A full or partial refund may be available where, for example, the worker’s visa application is refused or withdrawn, the worker does not start employment, they receive a shorter period of permission than originally sponsored, or their sponsored employment ends earlier than expected.
The exact refund depends on what has happened.
This can be particularly important where a worker was sponsored for several years but leaves relatively early.
A company that paid a substantial Immigration Skills Charge should not automatically assume the entire amount is lost.
Check whether a refund is due.
For employers sponsoring several workers, keeping track of this can add up to meaningful sums of money.
What happens to the Immigration Skills Charge if the employee leaves early?
A partial refund may be available for the unused sponsorship period, subject to the Home Office rules.
For example, if a worker was sponsored for several years but their employment ends significantly earlier, part of the Immigration Skills Charge may potentially be refunded.
This is separate from the Certificate of Sponsorship fee.
Employers should therefore keep clear records showing:
- what was paid;
- which worker the payment related to;
- the sponsorship period;
- when employment actually ended; and
- whether the relevant Home Office report was made.
A single accounting entry saying “immigration £4,000” is considerably less helpful two years later.
Is the Certificate of Sponsorship fee refunded if the worker leaves?
The Certificate of Sponsorship fee should not be confused with the Immigration Skills Charge.
They are separate fees with different rules.
The fact that an employer may become entitled to an Immigration Skills Charge refund does not automatically mean the CoS fee is refunded as well.
This is another reason we prefer to break sponsorship costs down individually rather than discussing one large figure called “visa fees”.
You need to know what was actually paid.
Does a Sponsor Licence have to be renewed?
Historically, Sponsor Licences generally had to be renewed every four years.
That changed in 2024 for most Worker and Temporary Worker sponsors.
Most licences that would otherwise have expired after 6 April 2024 no longer require routine renewal every four years. The licence generally continues while the sponsor remains licensed, although the Home Office can of course take action where sponsorship requirements are not met.
This has removed one recurring Home Office cost for many businesses.
It does not mean the licence can be obtained and forgotten about.
The sponsor still has ongoing compliance and reporting duties.
The renewal fee may have largely disappeared, but the responsibilities certainly have not.
Are there other Home Office sponsorship costs?
Potentially.
Once the business has a Sponsor Licence, additional charges can arise depending on what it later needs to do.
For example, the Home Office operates priority services for certain Sponsor Management System requests.
There can also be substantial costs where a sponsor develops compliance problems. If the Home Office downgrades a licence and requires a Sponsor Action Plan, the current fee for the action plan is significant.
These are not ordinary costs that every sponsor should expect to pay.
Ideally, a business never needs to budget for a Sponsor Action Plan.
The wider point is that the cheapest way to operate a Sponsor Licence is usually to manage it properly from the beginning.
Compliance problems are rarely a cost-saving exercise.
How much should a business budget for its first sponsored worker?
Rather than looking at one figure, I would separate the budget into three stages.
Sponsor Licence stage
This may include the Sponsor Licence application fee, optional priority service and any professional fee for preparing the licence application.
Sponsorship stage
Once the licence is granted, this can include the Certificate of Sponsorship and Immigration Skills Charge.
Worker application stage
The worker may then have the visa application fee, Immigration Health Surcharge, optional priority service and any professional application fee.
Some businesses only pay the first two categories.
Others decide to pay everything.
Either is possible depending on the particular charge and what the sponsorship rules allow.
The important thing is knowing the likely total before making commitments to the worker.
A realistic example for a small business
Suppose a small marketing company employs somebody on a Graduate visa.
The employee is doing well and the business wants to keep them after their Graduate permission expires.
The company does not currently have a Sponsor Licence.
It decides to obtain one and sponsor the employee for three years.
Assuming the Immigration Skills Charge applies, the employer’s basic Home Office sponsorship costs would be:
- Sponsor Licence: £611
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525
- Immigration Skills Charge: £1,440
Total:
£2,576
If the company wants Sponsor Licence priority:
£3,326
If it also agrees to pay the worker’s three-year IHS, another £3,105 is added.
We are then at:
£6,431
before the worker’s visa application fee and any professional costs.
That is why the sensible question is not:
“How much is a Sponsor Licence?”
It is:
“How much will the whole sponsorship process cost in our circumstances?”
What if you want to sponsor several employees?
The licence application fee itself does not multiply with every worker.
The CoS and Immigration Skills Charge generally do.
Suppose a small company already holds its Sponsor Licence and wants to sponsor three new Skilled Workers for three years, with the ISC applying to each worker.
Each worker would potentially involve:
£525 CoS
plus
£1,440 ISC
which is:
£1,965 per worker
For three workers:
£5,895
in those employer-side Home Office charges.
For a larger sponsor, the figure would be considerably higher because of the higher Immigration Skills Charge.
Businesses planning international recruitment at scale should therefore treat immigration costs as part of workforce planning rather than dealing with each invoice as a surprise.
What about professional fees?
Professional fees vary considerably.
Some providers offer little more than help completing the online form.
Others deal with the whole process, including reviewing the business, proposed worker and role, checking supporting documents, considering key personnel and compliance systems, preparing the application and dealing with the sponsorship steps afterwards.
Those are not really the same service.
When deciding whether professional assistance is worth paying for, the useful question is not simply:
“Can I fill this application in myself?”
You probably can.
The better question is:
“Do I know enough about sponsorship to be confident that the application, evidence, role and proposed worker have all been checked properly?”
For an established HR department that manages sponsorship every week, the answer may well be yes.
For a business applying for its first Sponsor Licence because an important employee needs sponsorship, paying for proper professional preparation will often make considerably more commercial sense than trying to learn the entire system for one application.
Is it cheaper to apply for a Sponsor Licence yourself?
On paper, yes.
If you prepare the application yourself, you do not pay a professional fee.
But that is only a saving if the application is prepared correctly.
A director spending hours reading Sponsor Guidance, trying to understand Appendix A, checking occupation codes, working through key personnel requirements and figuring out the SMS process is not working for free. Their time has a value too.
More importantly, if something important is missed, the financial consequences can extend beyond the application fee.
There may be:
- a delayed recruitment;
- an employee approaching visa expiry;
- a lost candidate;
- another application;
- further professional work to fix the problem; or
- disruption to the business.
For that reason, we would generally encourage first-time sponsors to have the application professionally prepared rather than treating professional assistance as an optional luxury at the end.
The objective is not simply to get a form submitted.
It is to get the business properly set up for sponsorship.
Can professional help actually save money?
It can.
Sometimes the saving is direct.
An adviser may identify that the business qualifies as a small sponsor when somebody assumed it was large, or establish that a particular charge or exemption applies differently from what the employer expected.
More often, the saving is in avoiding mistakes and unnecessary work.
For example, there is little point paying for a Sponsor Licence if the role you intend to sponsor does not qualify.
There is little point paying for priority if there is no genuine deadline.
There is even less point obtaining the licence and only afterwards discovering that the salary you agreed with the employee does not meet the relevant Skilled Worker requirement.
The cheapest mistake is the one caught before anybody pays for it.
Should sponsorship costs stop you from sponsoring someone?
That depends on the value of the employee to the business.
A few thousand pounds sounds significant when viewed as an immigration fee.
It can look rather different when viewed as a recruitment cost spread over three or five years.
If the business has found a skilled employee earning £40,000, £50,000 or £60,000 a year who it genuinely wants to retain, sponsorship costs may be a relatively modest part of the overall employment cost.
On the other hand, if the business is unsure whether it needs the role, cannot comfortably afford the salary or is only considering sponsorship because it feels obliged to keep a particular worker, those are bigger questions.
Sponsorship should support a genuine employment decision.
It should not be the reason for creating one.
How can a business keep sponsorship costs under control?
The best savings usually come from planning properly rather than trying to find shortcuts.
Before applying, establish:
- whether the business actually needs a Sponsor Licence;
- whether it qualifies as a small sponsor;
- whether the proposed worker can be sponsored;
- whether the proposed role is eligible;
- whether the salary works;
- whether the Immigration Skills Charge applies;
- how long sponsorship is genuinely required for; and
- whether priority is really necessary.
Then prepare the Sponsor Licence application properly.
There is very little economy in saving money at the preparation stage only to spend considerably more fixing a problem afterwards.
Need help working out your Sponsor Licence costs?
If you are considering sponsoring an employee, we can look at the whole position before you commit to the application.
That means looking at the business, the worker, the proposed role, salary, sponsorship period, Sponsor Licence requirements, Certificate of Sponsorship and Immigration Skills Charge so that you understand both whether the sponsorship works and what it is likely to cost.
We can then prepare and manage the Sponsor Licence application and sponsorship process for you.
You can apply yourself. The Home Office does not require you to appoint a professional representative.
For most first-time sponsors, however, there is a considerable difference between being able to submit the application yourself and having the time and experience to know that everything behind it has been prepared properly.
When the business is already committing thousands of pounds to sponsorship and potentially tens of thousands of pounds to the employee’s salary, professional preparation is usually a relatively small part of the overall cost.
The aim is not to make the application more complicated.
It is to take the complication away from you.
FAQs
1. How much does a Sponsor Licence cost in 2026?
A Worker Sponsor Licence currently costs £611 for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,682 for a medium or large sponsor. This is only the Home Office fee for the licence application. Employers should also budget for the Certificate of Sponsorship, Immigration Skills Charge and any optional priority or professional fees.
2. What is the total cost of sponsoring a Skilled Worker for three years?
For a small sponsor obtaining its first licence, the basic employer-side Home Office costs can total £2,576. This consists of the £611 Sponsor Licence fee, £525 Certificate of Sponsorship fee and £1,440 Immigration Skills Charge. Priority processing, professional fees and any worker visa costs paid by the employer would be additional.
3. How much is a Certificate of Sponsorship in 2026?
The current Certificate of Sponsorship fee for a Skilled Worker is £525. This is paid by the sponsor when assigning the CoS and is separate from the Sponsor Licence application fee and Immigration Skills Charge. Once a business has its Sponsor Licence, a new CoS will normally be required for each worker it sponsors.
4. How much is the Immigration Skills Charge for three years?
For three years of sponsorship, the Immigration Skills Charge is currently £1,440 for a small or charitable sponsor and £3,960 for a medium or large sponsor. Exemptions apply in certain circumstances, so employers should check whether the charge actually applies before calculating the final cost of sponsoring a worker.
5. Does an employer have to pay the Immigration Skills Charge?
Yes, where the Immigration Skills Charge applies, it is a sponsor cost. The employer must not pass the charge on to the sponsored worker. Current sponsorship rules also restrict sponsors from recouping certain other sponsorship costs, so employers should be careful with contractual repayment clauses and deductions relating to immigration expenses.
6. Does an employer have to pay the worker’s visa and IHS?
Not normally simply because the employer is sponsoring them. The worker’s visa application fee and Immigration Health Surcharge are separate from the employer’s sponsorship charges. An employer can voluntarily pay these costs as part of the employment package, but the position is different from sponsorship fees that the employer itself is required to pay.
7. How much is Sponsor Licence priority processing?
The Home Office pre-licence priority service currently costs £750 in addition to the Sponsor Licence application fee. It can be useful where a business has a genuine recruitment or immigration deadline. Priority provides faster consideration of an eligible application, but it does not improve the merits of the application or guarantee that the licence will be granted.
8. Do I pay the Sponsor Licence fee for every sponsored worker?
No. The Sponsor Licence belongs to the organisation and you do not normally make a new licence application each time another worker is sponsored. However, individual workers will normally require their own Certificate of Sponsorship and may attract an Immigration Skills Charge, meaning there are additional Home Office costs each time the business sponsors someone.
9. Can the Immigration Skills Charge be refunded if an employee leaves?
A partial Immigration Skills Charge refund may be available where sponsored employment ends earlier than the period originally paid for, subject to the Home Office refund rules. Refunds can also arise in certain other circumstances, including some refused or withdrawn visa applications. The CoS fee is separate and does not automatically follow the same refund rules.
10. Is it cheaper to apply for a Sponsor Licence yourself?
Preparing the application yourself avoids professional fees, but that does not necessarily make it more cost-effective. A first-time sponsor must understand the evidence, key personnel, compliance requirements and proposed sponsorship. Professional preparation can reduce internal time and help identify problems before fees are paid or an employee’s immigration timetable becomes dependent on the application.