Skills Charge!

1. £1000 per year for medium or large sponsors

OR

2. £364 per year for small or charitable sponsors (your annual turnover is £10.2 million or less and you have 50 employees or fewer)

It will be payable upfront and for the total period of time covered by the certificate of sponsorship.

Are you liable to pay?

Subject to parliamentary approval, legislation expected to come into force on 6 April 2017 means that you may be required to the Immigration Skills Charge where you sponsor a worker from outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

The skills charge will apply to a sponsor of a Tier 2 worker assigned a certificate of sponsorship in the ‘General’ or ‘Intra-company Transfer’ route and who will be applying from:

• outside the UK for a visa
• inside the UK to switch to this visa from another
• inside the UK to extend their existing visa

You are not liable if you are sponsoring…

• a non-EEA national who was sponsored in Tier 2 before 6 April 2017 and is applying from inside the UK to extend their Tier 2 stay with either the same sponsor or a different sponsor
• a Tier 2 (Intra-company Transfer) Graduate Trainee
• a worker to do a specified PhD level occupation
• a Tier 4 student visa holder in the UK switching to a Tier 2 (General) visa

EXEMPTION!

Workers family members (PBS Dependants) are exempt from this skills charge!!

Information on the overseas criminal record certificate requirement

From April 2017, the Government plans to extend the requirement to provide a criminal record certificate to Tier 2 visa applicants coming to work in education, health and social care sectors and to their adult dependants.

The extension of this requirement will strengthen safeguards against those with a criminal history seeking to come to the UK.

Applicants subject to this requirement will need to submit a criminal record certificate from each country in which they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the 10 years before making their application. Their adult dependants will also be subject to this requirement.

Certificate of sponsorship start date

Accordance to Paragraph 23.9 the guidance on the start date for Certificate of Sponsorship (COS) has now been revised to include the following:

The start date given on the CoS must be the date that the migrant will start working for the Sponsor. It is possible to delay this start date but,

1. in the case of a Tier 2 (General) migrant, any revised start date cannot be put back more than 4 weeks from the original start date on the CoS.
2. in the case of a Tier 2 (Intra-company Transfer (ICT)), any revised start date can surpass the 4 weeks as long as the migrant continues to be paid by the sending overseas entity.
3. A migrant can be granted entry clearance no more than 14 days before the start date given on the CoS. Once the entry clearance has been granted, the start date may be delayed.

Did you know?

If you are an A-rated Tier 2 or Tier 5 sponsor requesting faster consideration of one of the following four types of change of circumstances request:

• Add a Level 1 User,
• Replace Authorising Officer,
• Renew your Annual Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) Allocation
• Obtain Additional CoS Allocation

You can use UKVI’s priority service, The service costs £200 per change of circumstance request. 

Click HERE to head on over to our website