Obtaining a UK Sponsorship Licence to Employ Graduates

Imperial & Legal has been helping us for a long time to resolve our clients’ issues. This time we needed advice on employing new staff. It turned out we needed a sponsorship licence to hire foreign students educated in the UK. I am happy we got in touch with Imperial & Legal because their experienced specialists took care of the matter quickly.

Owner of ABC Universal

Clients’ names and photos have been changed

Our former client ABC Universal contacted Imperial & Legal again. The owner was looking for advice on employing foreign students who graduated from UK universities and securing their status to legally stay in the country.

Our Client 

ABC Universal is a real estate company from Leicester. The company’s management decided to hire new staff to delegate some of the duties to them. 

ABC Universal’s HR department advertised their vacancies through online recruitment platforms. Many graduates were interested because no specific qualification was required. Job interviews were conducted and suitable candidates were selected, but as their UK Student visas were due to expire, Imperial & Legal were challenged with two things. 

The Challenges 

The first challenge was to obtain a UK sponsorship licence to hire foreign workers. The second one was to obtain UK Skilled Worker visas for them because their Student visas were expiring.

The Solution

Imperial & Legal recommended that the owner of ABC Universal appointed an authorised person to manage the UK sponsorship licence system, supervise the activities of other employees with access to the system and generally handle the whole process of obtaining a sponsorship licence.

Imperial & Legal started to prepare documents to speed up the process. We immediately sent the client a list of documents required for a UK sponsorship licence: 

• A bank statement from the corporate account
• A bank reference 
• Audited annual accounts 
• A taxpayer registration certificate
• A letter from the regulating authority.

The client sent us the documents one by one as they became available. ABC Universal was granted a sponsorship licence two weeks after collecting all the necessary documents and submitting an online application.

An employer with a sponsorship licence has the following obligations as a sponsor: 

• To keep track of the immigration status of its employees and any changes
• To keep copies of the documents provided by each employee, including copies of passports, degrees, and diplomas
• To monitor employees’ attendance
• To keep contact details of the employees up to date
• To notify the immigration authorities of any issues as soon as they arise (e.g. if your foreign worker has not come to work for some time).

When a company becomes a sponsor, it can assign a certificate of sponsorship (CoS) to each foreign worker. It is an electronic document, not a physical one. Each certificate has a unique number which a worker can use to apply for a UK Skilled Worker Visa.

After assisting with a sponsorship licence, Imperial & Legal’s advisors addressed the second challenge of issuing certificates of sponsorship to the hired graduates and applying for their Skilled Worker visas. Our specialists checked when student visas expired to apply for new visas on time. In the end, all young specialists were granted UK Skilled Worker visas within a month.

ABC Universal obtains a sponsorship licence and hires foreign employees within six weeks

Conclusion 

The management of ABC Universal is fully satisfied with the competence and skills of Imperial & Legal’s advisors. The sponsorship licence was obtained within just two weeks after the application was submitted. And the only thing that the company had to do was to send us the required documents. The company offered new employees jobs and issued sponsorship certificates to them, which they used to apply for visas. They can now stay in the UK and work in the best real estate company in Leicester.