Sponsor Licence Renewal: The Renewal Requirement Was Removed

Renewal No Longer Exists

Sponsor licences used to run for 4 years. A sponsor had to apply to renew before the expiry date, pay the fee again, and risk losing the ability to sponsor if the date passed. That is no longer how it works.

The Home Office removed the renewal requirement on 6 April 2024. Its sponsor duties guidance now says that once a licence is granted it “will remain valid for an indefinite period” unless the organisation surrenders it or the Home Office revokes it. GOV.UK puts the same point more simply: a licence “usually stays valid for as long as you continue to meet the eligibility requirements”.

In practice this means there is no renewal application, no renewal fee, no expiry date on the licence, and no reminder to wait for. If you were told at some point to set a calendar alert for a licence expiry date, that alert is now about something that does not happen.

The official position is on GOV.UK: UK visa sponsorship for employers and in sponsor guidance part 3: sponsor duties and compliance.

The One Exception: Scale-up and UK Expansion Worker Licences

Two licence types still have a fixed life. A licence to sponsor Scale-up Workers or UK Expansion Workers is valid for a maximum of 4 years, and GOV.UK states that an organisation cannot apply for another licence to sponsor those types of worker afterwards. There is no renewal route for them.

The UK Expansion Worker route exists to let an overseas business set up a UK branch or subsidiary. Once the UK business is trading, the usual next step is a standard Skilled Worker licence, which is a fresh application rather than a renewal.

What Replaced Renewal: Ongoing Compliance

Renewal used to be the moment the Home Office looked at a sponsor's record. Now that moment can come at any time, so the record has to hold up continuously. Three duties do the work that renewal used to do.

Reporting through the Sponsor Management System

Sponsors report changes through their Sponsor Management System account, which is the Home Office portal for sponsors. The deadlines set out in the sponsor duties guidance are:

• Changes to a sponsored worker: normally within 10 working days of the event. Examples include a worker not starting the job within 28 days, being absent without permission for more than 10 working days in a row, or a drop in salary from the level on the Certificate of Sponsorship.
• Changes to the organisation: normally within 20 working days. Examples include a change of address or trading name, a merger or takeover, insolvency, or a change of owner.

Some things have no fixed deadline and must be reported as soon as reasonably practicable — for instance, if a sponsor knows or suspects that a sponsored worker has broken the conditions of their permission to stay. See sponsor compliance duties and the Sponsor Management System guide for the full list.

Record-keeping

Sponsors keep a file for each sponsored worker: proof of the right to work, the recruitment record, contact details, absence records and evidence that the salary and the job match the Certificate of Sponsorship. These are the records a compliance officer asks to see.

Compliance checks

The guidance states that the Home Office may check sponsors at any time, both before deciding a licence application and after a licence has been granted. A check can be a visit to any premises where sponsored workers do their work, including a client's offices, or a digital check, and it can be announced or unannounced. There is no longer a renewal date that triggers a review, which is precisely why a check can arrive on any ordinary working day.

What Can Still End a Licence

A licence does not lapse on its own any more, but it can still come to an end in four ways.

• Surrender. An organisation that no longer wants to sponsor workers, and has no sponsored workers still working for it, can give the licence up through the Sponsor Management System.
• Downgrade to a B-rating. Where the Home Office finds the sponsor is not meeting its duties, it can drop the licence from an A-rating to a B-rating and issue a time-limited action plan. Action plans run for a fixed period of 3 months and carry a fee. While a sponsor is B-rated it cannot assign Certificates of Sponsorship to new workers. See A-rated and B-rated sponsors and the action plan guide.
• Suspension. The Home Office can suspend a licence while it investigates. See sponsor licence suspension.
• Revocation. In serious cases the licence is taken away. The workers sponsored under it can have their permission to stay cut short, which gives them a limited period to find another sponsor or leave the UK. See sponsor licence revocation.

The warning that used to attach to a missed renewal deadline — sponsored workers losing their permission — now attaches to revocation instead. The risk did not disappear; it moved from a date in the diary to the day-to-day compliance record.

Sponsor Licence Costs Without Renewal

With no renewal fee, the licence fee is a genuine one-off. The current figures on GOV.UK are:

• Worker licence, small or charitable sponsor: £611
• Worker licence, medium or large sponsor: £1,682
• Temporary Worker licence: £611, whatever the size of the organisation
• Priority handling: £750 extra for a decision within 10 working days. Most applications are decided in less than 8 weeks without it.

An organisation is usually a small sponsor if at least 2 of these apply: annual turnover of £15 million or less, total assets of £7.5 million or less, or 50 employees or fewer. Charities pay the small sponsor fee whatever their size.

The per-worker costs continue for as long as the sponsorship does: a Certificate of Sponsorship costs £525 on a Worker licence, and the Immigration Skills Charge is £480 for the first 12 months plus £240 for each further 6 months for a small or charitable sponsor, or £1,320 plus £660 for a medium or large one.

Since 31 December 2024 a sponsor cannot pass the licence fee, the administrative costs of the licence application, or the Certificate of Sponsorship fee on to a Skilled Worker. GOV.UK warns that a licence may be revoked if a sponsor asks a sponsored worker to pay them. Full breakdown in the sponsor licence cost guide.

If You Are Looking for a Renewal Date

Employers still search for this, usually for one of three reasons.

• A licence granted before April 2024. Licences that were due to expire on or after 6 April 2024 no longer needed renewing. Nothing had to be done and no fee was payable; the expiry date simply stopped applying.
• An old expiry date still showing somewhere. Internal HR trackers, old solicitor letters and older web pages still carry 4-year expiry dates. The Sponsor Management System account and the published register of licensed sponsors are the places to check what is current.
• Renewing an allocation of Certificates of Sponsorship. This one does still exist and is a different thing. Sponsors request their annual allocation of undefined Certificates of Sponsorship each year through the Sponsor Management System. See the Certificate of Sponsorship guide.

Next Steps

Because there is no renewal review, the compliance record is what the Home Office looks at whenever it looks. The practical equivalents of the old renewal audit are checking that reports have gone in within their 10 or 20 working day deadlines, that the worker files are complete, and that the key personnel named on the licence — the Authorising Officer, Key Contact and Level 1 User — are still the right people and still in post.

Related guides:

• Sponsor Licence: Complete Guide
• Compliance Duties
• Sponsor Licence Costs
• Sponsor Management System (SMS)
• Sponsor Licence Revocation
• Home Office Contact Guide

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