Sponsor Licence Time: 8 Weeks, or 10 Days Priority

Standard Processing Timeline

GOV.UK says “most applications are dealt with in less than 8 weeks”. That is the only figure the Home Office publishes for the standard service: there is no target it commits to, and no published distribution of how long applications actually take.

The GOV.UK sponsor licence page states the current expected processing time. Check this before applying, as it may change throughout the year.

Priority Processing

GOV.UK states: “You may be able to pay an extra £750 to get a decision within 10 working days.” The wording is conditional for a reason: the pre-licence priority service guidance says a request can be turned down because “we have reached our daily limit of requests”, or because it was made outside the service’s hours of 9am to 11:59pm, Monday to Friday.

The guidance also lists routes that cannot use the priority service at present: UK Expansion Worker, Service Supplier, Secondment Worker, Scale-up Worker, Government Authorised Exchange, International Agreement and Seasonal Worker. It says priority means the application is considered within 10 working days, not that it will be approved.

The £750 is on top of the licence fee itself, which is £611 for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,682 for a medium or large one.

What Happens During Processing

After you submit your application, the Home Office:

• Checks the documents arrived. The submission sheet and documents must reach the Home Office within 5 working days of the online application.
• Verifies your organisation. It checks that the organisation is genuine and operating or trading lawfully in the UK, using the documents listed in Appendix A of the sponsor guidance, and that it holds any registration or licence its sector requires.
• Assesses suitability of key personnel. The Authorising Officer, Key Contact, and Level 1 User are checked for suitability.
• May visit your business. GOV.UK says the Home Office “may visit your business to make sure you’re trustworthy and capable of carrying out your duties”. It does not publish how often it visits.
• Makes a decision. The application can be rejected as invalid, refused, or granted (with an A-rating, or a provisional rating for UK Expansion Worker). The Home Office may ask for more documents before deciding.

Pre-Licence Compliance Visits

The Home Office may check your organisation before deciding your application. It does not publish how often it does this. Its guidance says it uses risk assessments, and makes further checks, which can include a compliance check, where it knows little about the organisation or has concerns about the evidence. It says a check is highly likely where the business has little or no physical office space.

A compliance check may be a visit to the main office and any other place the sponsored workers would work, or a check by video call. The guidance says officers may interview the organisation and relevant staff, and assess its HR systems, any convictions or civil penalties, whether current workers keep to the conditions of their permission, and whether the job offered meets the route’s rules.

The systems the visit looks for are the ones you would need anyway once the licence is granted. See compliance systems for what those are: HR record-keeping, right to work checks, and a way of tracking sponsored workers’ attendance and contact details.

Common Causes of Delay

• Missing documents. The guidance says that if a mandatory document is missing or incorrect, the application is rejected as invalid and the fee refunded. If another document is missing, the Home Office emails and gives 5 working days to send it. If nothing arrives by then, the application is refused and the fee is not refunded.
• Differences found during a check. The guidance says that if a compliance check finds differences from what the application said, the Home Office will say whether it needs more information before making a final decision.
• A pre-licence visit. If the Home Office decides to visit, the decision waits on the visit being arranged and carried out.

Planning Your Hiring Timeline

The sponsor licence is just the first step. After receiving the licence, you still need to:

• Assign a certificate of sponsorship to the worker. For a Skilled Worker applying from outside the UK, the employer first applies for a ‘defined’ certificate, which GOV.UK says is usually approved within one working day. For other workers, certificates come from the yearly allocation set in the licence decision letter, which can be zero.
• Wait for the worker’s own visa decision. The Home Office service standard is 3 weeks for a work visa applied for outside the UK, and 8 weeks for a Skilled Worker application made inside the UK
• Allow for the worker’s notice period and relocation. The certificate of sponsorship must be used within 3 months of being assigned, and the worker must not apply more than 3 months before the start date on it

Those are the published figures for each step. The Home Office does not publish an end-to-end figure, and adding the steps together gives a floor rather than a forecast.

See the complete sponsor licence guide for the application itself, and the Skilled Worker visa processing time to plan the worker's application timeline.

Checking Application Status

GOV.UK does not describe a way to track a sponsor licence application online. UK Visas and Immigration publishes its contact routes at Contact UK Visas and Immigration.

Next Steps

The application asks for supporting documents from Appendix A of the sponsor guidance, and the Home Office may visit before deciding. The compliance duties guide sets out the systems a visit looks at. Once granted, a licence does not expire and needs no renewal, unless it is a Scale-up Worker or UK Expansion Worker licence, which lasts 4 years and cannot be renewed.

Related guides:

• Sponsor Licence: Complete Guide
• Sponsor Licence Requirements
• Sponsor Licence Costs
• Compliance Duties
• UK Visa Fees: Complete Guide
• Home Office Contact Guide

Questions and answers