If you are thinking of coming to the U.K to work, getting a visa sponsorship would be the best approach for you. Seeing that there are a lot of protocols and finance involved in the process, finding someone to sponsor you would help alleviate such problems. In this article, we would be looking at how to get visa sponsorship to work in the U.K.
Before we delve into the discussion for this article, below is what we would be looking going into.
- What is UK visa sponsorship?
- What is a Certificate of Sponsorship (COS)?
- Types of COS
- How to get a COS for a UK Visa Sponsorship
- How to get a Visa sponsorship to work in the UK
- Responsibilities of your UK visa sponsor
- Who cannot be sponsored to work in the UK
- How to Apply
What is UK visa sponsorship?
UK visa sponsorship is the ability of an employer or individual to sponsor a foreigner to work in the UK under a work visa. To do this, they are given a certificate of sponsorship that allows them to sponsor individuals to work in the UK.
The UK employer that wants to hire a foreign workers in their organization will be asked to sponsor them in the visa application by giving them a certificate of sponsorship.
The reason for this certificate is to ensure that the employer is willing to monitor the foreign worker’s activities during the course of his/her work duration in the country.
What is a Certificate of Sponsorship (COS)?
Certificates of Sponsorship (COS) are digital documents issued to foreign employees. They are unique numbers reserved for foreign employees. This number is to be used by the employee during their visa application.
It cannot be used after 3 months of it being issued to the individual.
Types of COS
There are majorly two types of certificates of sponsorship. Depending on what type of job you are coming to the U.K to do, would determine what type of certificate of sponsorship you would be given.
- COS for skilled workers working long-term
- COS for temporary workers working short-term
Employers are meant to ascertain what type of certificate of sponsorship they would be handling and what category of employees they would be hiring for the job. Typically, if you are working as a skilled worker in the U.K, you would not earn more than £150,000 per year.
For the COS for temporary workers, they can sometimes switch to the first category after a while in the country.
How to get a COS for a UK Visa Sponsorship?
The certificate of sponsorship is created by the assigned staff of the employer sponsoring you. They would make use of the Sponsorship Management System, after which the staff would be given the login details for your sponsor.
Your sponsor would then need to fill in certain information needed for your sponsorship. Such information includes ID information, passport info, current home address, work address, etc.
The fee to be paid cost about £200 for the skilled workers and £21 for the temporary workers.
How to get a Visa sponsorship to work in the UK
After you have gotten the certificate of sponsorship, you would then need to proceed to apply for visa sponsorship to work in the UK.
Your sponsor would need to provide certain documents which would be made known to him/her during the process of the application.
A total of £25,000 would be needed if they are sponsoring you for a skill job role in the UK and about £8,000 if they are sponsoring you for a temporary job role in the UK.
Other sponsorship prices include £6,000 and £2,000 for smaller job schemes in the UK.
Responsibilities of your UK visa sponsor
In this section, you would come to know what is required from your sponsors, if they are going to be assigning certificates of sponsorship to foreigners to work in the UK.
- keep information and registers about workers’ presence in the workplace and inform IKVI in case of any unexplained absence
- update the contact information of the worker
- For any change in the business process – must inform UKVI within 20 working days, if any of the following happens to the sponsoring employer:
- Insolvency
- change in the business’ scope of work
- part-taking in a union or take-over
- Properly examine skills, education, and accreditations related to the job requirements
- The issuance of the CoS has to be for a suitable job for sponsorship
- Inform UKVI about any break of the visa conditions from the sponsored worker
- be informed about workers’ immigration status
Who cannot be sponsored to work in the UK?
The question now is who cannot be sponsored or who cannot be issued a certificate of sponsorship to work in the UK?
The following people cannot be sponsored to work in the UK:
- People under the age of 18 for both categories of workers.
- People under the age of 16 forms the second category of workers which is the unskilled job category.
How to Apply
To proceed with applying for visa sponsorship to work in the UK, it is advised to first get a sponsor. This person would be given a certificate of sponsorship to sponsor your visa application process to work in the UK.