Good sponsorship management updates from the Home Office

The Home Office has emailed sponsor licence holders today to announce a few small but significant improvements that used to clog up the sponsor management system.

Annual certificate of sponsorship (‘CoS’) allocations will now be automatically renewed with the same number as the previous year’s allocation. This saves the annual crystal ball-gazing hassle of requesting and justifying a fresh allocation for each upcoming year. If extra CoS are needed for any upcoming year, sponsors can still request an increase.

The automatic allocation renewal will only kick in for those whose allocations that expire more than three months after today’s mailing, which means from 24 June 2023 onwards. For those with allocations expiring sooner, the usual renewal request will need to be made.

The routes eligible for automatic allocation renewal are:

Visa routes eligible for automatic allocation renewal:

• Skilled Worker (undefined only)
• Global Business Mobility – Senior or Specialist Worker
• Global Business Mobility – Graduate Trainee
• Global Business Mobility – Service Supplier
• Global Business Mobility – Secondment Worker
• Minister of Religion
• International Sportsperson
• Charity Worker
• Creative Worker
• Government Authorised Exchange
• International Agreement
• Religious Worker
• Scale Up

Visa routes not eligible for automatic allocation renewal

• Global Business Mobility – UK Expansion Worker
• Global Business Mobility – Service Supplier
• Global Business Mobility – Secondment Worker
• Seasonal Worker
• Student
• Child Student

In addition, the following sponsor requests will now be immediately fulfilled. instead of having to wait 18 weeks:

• replacing the Authorising Office and Key Contact (signed submission sheets are still required)
• adding a Level 1 user (checks are still conducted)
• updating the organisation details

The conditions for immediate fulfilment are:

• the licence is fully active
• the sponsor is A-rated
• the postcode of the address stated for the new Authorising Office, Key Contact, or Level 1 user matches either the postcode of the main organisation address or head office address, or for Key contacts and Level 1 users only, the postcode of a legal representative. 

These changes are all positive and reduce some of the unnecessary red tape around the system. Hopefully we will continue to see more changes like these in the future.