UK visa sponsor checker: is this company a licensed sponsor?

The name is the organisation's legal name as the Home Office holds it. That is often not the brand on the job advert. A bank you know by one word may be listed as a longer company name, and a group can hold several licences under different names. If a search finds nothing, try a shorter part of the name, or look up the legal name at the foot of the company's website.

The town and county are the address on the licence, usually the head office. They are not necessarily where the job is, so use them to tell apart companies with similar names.

The routes are the types of visa the licence covers. For most people looking for work, the one that matters is Skilled Worker. If Skilled Worker is not among the routes listed, ask the employer how it plans to sponsor the role before you go further.

The rating is A for a licence in good standing. The Home Office can downgrade a sponsor to a B rating when it finds a breach it thinks can be fixed, with an action plan to follow. Its guidance for sponsors says a B-rated sponsor may not sponsor any new workers until it regains its A rating. A B rating is worth a direct question before you spend time on an application.

No longer on the register means the employer held a licence when we first saw it and has since left the list. The register does not say why an employer left it.

Being on the register means an employer can sponsor. It does not mean it will for every role, and many licensed employers say in their adverts that a role cannot be sponsored. Once you know the employer holds a licence, three more checks are worth making before you put an evening into an application.

1. Read the advert for sponsorship wording. Look for a line about the right to work in the UK. “Sponsorship available” is a good sign; “you must already have the right to work” settles it the other way. The UK sponsors hiring now page lists licensed employers with open roles and counts what their adverts say.
2. Check the salary against the published figure. A Skilled Worker job has to pay the higher of a yearly floor and the going rate for its occupation code. The Skilled Worker salary threshold check shows both for every code in the main table.
3. Ask. If the advert is silent, a short message to the recruiter asking whether the role can be sponsored saves both sides time. In the job application tracker, the free Can I apply? check reads a pasted posting for right-to-work and sponsorship lines and quotes them back to you.