UNITED KINGDOM – UKVI Sponsorship fees update and other recent guidance changes.

April 25, 2025

By: Sachini Gamage, UK Immigration Consultant, Newland Chase

Sponsor licence holders in the UK are advised that on April 9, 2025, the Home Office made changes to the various Sponsor Guidance documents.

The following are the main changes to these documents:

• Sponsors are prohibited from passing sponsorship fees and associated administrative costs on to their sponsored workers. This means that employers are responsible for paying any related UK government fees, including the sponsor licence fee, adding a new tier to the licence, Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) allocation requests, CoS assigning, and any related associated administrative costs (see below) to these services.
• Sponsors must always cover the Immigration Skills Charge for a Skilled worker or Senior Specialist worker CoS where this charge applies.
• The same applies for the cost of the CoS fee for these other routes, for CoS assigned on and after April 9, 2025: 
  • All Global Business Mobility routes
  • Minister of Religion
  • International Sportsperson
  • Scale-up
  • Seasonal Worker

It is important to note that the UK Government will normally revoke the licence if an employer recoups (or attempts to recoup) any of these fees from a worker being sponsored by the company under any of these UK work visa routes.

Associated administrative costs means any costs incurred by the employer to obtain, use or maintain their licence and include:

• Fees for premium services or priority services for sponsor licence applications, changes of circumstances requests, or assigning, requesting or applying for a CoS.
• Fees for legal advice related to applying for, using, or maintaining a sponsor licence, or assigning, requesting, or applying for a CoS.
• Immigration advice or immigration services provided by a third party to a sponsored worker where the worker did not have a genuine choice in whether, or how, to obtain such advice or services, or where the sponsor provides such advice or services to the worker directly.

What does this mean for you as a sponsor?

Fees for immigration advice or immigration services (either provided by a third party or the sponsor directly) are now considered associated administrative costs where a sponsored employee did not have a genuine choice in whether or how to obtain such services. As such, sponsors will need to now consider how this can be evidenced. Sponsors will need to show evidence of a genuine choice when the immigration advice/immigration services fees are passed to a sponsored employee. Sponsored employees are not mandated to accept such an offer or pay such fees.

In relation to visa application fees, it is acknowledged that these fall under a private arrangement between the sponsor and the individual. If both parties agree and a repayment arrangement is in place, this would be permitted.

Please reach out to your Newland Chase dedicated contact or submit an inquiry should you have any specific questions regarding this announcement.