UK Work Visa Sponsorship Requirements: What Employers Must Do

Getting a Skilled Worker visa from India is not something you can do alone. It requires a UK employer to hold an active sponsor licence and to issue you a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) — and both of those steps come with obligations that your employer must meet before UKVI will consider your application.

Understanding what your employer needs to do is important for two reasons. First, it lets you assess whether a prospective employer is genuinely set up to sponsor you or is still working through the process. Second, if something goes wrong with your sponsorship, knowing the employer-side requirements helps you identify where the failure occurred.

The Sponsor Licence: What It Is and Who Qualifies

A UK employer cannot sponsor overseas workers without a sponsor licence granted by the Home Office. The licence is employer-specific — your employer's sponsor licence cannot be used by a subsidiary, a client site, or a parent company unless they each hold their own licence.

To be eligible for a sponsor licence, an employer must:

• Be a genuinely operating UK-based organisation
• Have a UK business bank account
• Demonstrate that the role they want to fill is a genuine vacancy at RQF Level 3 or above
• Have no unspent criminal convictions for certain offences (immigration fraud, financial crime)
• Not have had a previous sponsor licence revoked in the last five years

The Home Office reviews the employer's Companies House registration, VAT registration, and Employer Reference Number (ERN) as part of the licence application. For Indian IT firms with UK branches — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant — these checks are typically straightforward because the UK entities are well-established. For smaller UK employers or newly formed subsidiaries, the process takes more scrutiny.

Obtaining a new sponsor licence typically takes 8 to 12 weeks. If your employer does not already hold one and you are waiting on a job start date, this is the first bottleneck to check.

The Certificate of Sponsorship

Once the employer holds a sponsor licence, they assign you a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) — a unique 12-character alphanumeric reference number that you include in your visa application. The CoS is not a physical document; it is a digital record in the Home Office sponsorship management system.

The CoS contains key information that UKVI reviews during your application:

• The job title and SOC 2020 code
• The offered annual salary (gross)
• The contracted hours per week
• The start and end date of employment
• Whether the employer certifies your maintenance funds

The salary on the CoS must meet both the general Skilled Worker threshold (£41,700 in 2026 for most roles) and the specific going rate for the SOC code assigned. If the salary on the CoS is even slightly below the going rate for your SOC, UKVI will refuse the visa — and there is no appeal on salary grounds. For Indian IT professionals, this is where many applications fail silently. The employer's HR team may assign a SOC code that maps to a higher going rate than the offered salary without realising the mismatch.

Common SOC code going rates in 2026 that catch Indian applicants:

• SOC 2134 (Programmers and Software Development Professionals): £54,700
• SOC 2137 (Software Engineers): £45,600
• SOC 2121 (Civil Engineers): £50,400
• SOC 2421 (Chartered and Certified Accountants): £49,200

Your employer must also pay an Immigration Skills Charge (ISC) when assigning the CoS. This is a government levy paid by the employer — not you — and it cannot legally be passed on to the worker. For large employers, the ISC is £1,320 per year; for small employers and charities, £480 per year. For a five-year visa, a large employer pays £6,600 in ISC. This cost is often a factor in how aggressively a company recruits from overseas.

The Genuine Vacancy Test

The Home Office's most significant 2026 change for employer-side compliance is the emphasis on the genuine vacancy test. A sponsor cannot create a role purely to facilitate a visa — the vacancy must reflect a real business need.

For Indian IT companies deploying workers to UK client sites, this test is particularly scrutinised. If UKVI determines that the UK employer is effectively acting as a staffing agency — providing workers to a third party without retaining control over their duties, salary, and supervision — the sponsorship is invalid. This has led to increased refusals for roles described as "consultant" at Indian IT firms, even when those individuals genuinely have high-skill technical roles.

What makes a vacancy pass the genuine vacancy test:

• The employer controls the worker's day-to-day tasks
• The role involves specific duties tied to the employer's own business operations
• The salary and employment terms are set by the sponsor (not the client)
• The job description aligns with the assigned SOC code's defined responsibilities

If you are being deployed by an Indian IT firm to work at a UK bank, retailer, or public sector client, ask your employer to confirm that your CoS reflects your role under their own operational control — not the client's project requirements.

Employer Compliance Obligations After the Visa Is Granted

Sponsorship does not end when your visa is approved. Employers must maintain ongoing compliance throughout your employment, or risk losing their sponsor licence. The main requirements:

Record-keeping: The employer must hold a copy of your passport, your Right to Work check (Share Code from your UKVI account), your National Insurance number, and your UK contact address. These must be updated if any details change.

Reporting: Employers must report certain events to UKVI within 10 working days: if you do not show up to start work, if your employment ends early, or if your role or salary changes significantly. Failure to report is one of the most common reasons sponsor licences are downgraded or revoked.

Salary continuity: If your salary drops below the going rate for your SOC code at any point — due to unpaid leave, a role change, or a restructure — the employer must either rectify it or report the change. A salary drop can also affect your extension and ILR eligibility down the line.

Attendance monitoring: For roles with irregular hours or remote work arrangements, the employer must have a system to confirm the worker is still employed and working their contracted hours.

What Indian Applicants Should Verify Before Applying

Before submitting your visa application, confirm the following with your employer:

1. Is the sponsor licence active? You can check the Home Office's public register of licensed sponsors at GOV.UK by searching your employer's name. An employer not on this list cannot legally assign a CoS.
2. What SOC code is assigned on your CoS? Ask for the exact code, then cross-reference it against the Home Office going rate table. The salary on your CoS must meet or exceed that going rate.
3. Is your salary based on no more than 48 hours per week? UKVI pro-rates salaries if contracted hours exceed 48 hours. If your contract states 60-hour weeks, your effective hourly rate may fall below the minimum hourly threshold of £17.13.
4. Has the employer certified your maintenance? If they have, you do not need to provide 28-day bank statements. If they have not, you must show £1,270 held continuously in your account for 28 days before the application date.
5. Is the ISC paid? Ask your employer's HR team to confirm the ISC payment has been submitted. A CoS assigned without the ISC payment being processed will be invalid.

The India to UK Skilled Worker Guide includes a pre-submission checklist covering the employer-side requirements alongside every document you need to prepare on your end — so you can verify your employer's compliance before filing.

See more United Kingdom guides →