Urgent sponsor licence help
Urgent sponsor licence help
A letter from UKVI about your sponsor licence starts a clock. This site explains, in plain English, what suspension and revocation actually mean, how to respond, whether the decision can be challenged, and what sponsored workers should do with the time they have. It is written and maintained by the immigration solicitors at Lawyery.
The sponsor guidance is explicit: no statutory appeal exists against suspension or revocation. Your response to the suspension letter, and judicial review after revocation, are the routes that exist.
When a licence is revoked, sponsored workers normally have their permission shortened to 60 days, or left unchanged if less than that remains. Every worker needs a plan inside that window.
After revocation, a cooling-off period of at least 12 months applies before a fresh application, rising to 24 months for repeat revocations. Losing the licence is rarely a short interruption.
Suspension is serious but survivable: many licences are reinstated after a well evidenced response. Revocation is a different order of event. The guides here walk through both, including the response window, the evidence UKVI expects, and the realistic outcomes.
If your sponsor's licence has been revoked, you will usually receive a letter shortening your permission to 60 days. You have done nothing wrong, and you have options: a new sponsor, a different route, or a planned departure that protects your immigration history.
Identify exactly what UKVI says has gone wrong, whether the licence is suspended or revoked, what deadline the letter sets, and whether an investigation is continuing. The allegations in the letter define the whole response.
Secure your SMS records, worker files, payroll, right to work checks and reporting confirmations exactly as they stand. Never backdate or reconstruct a record: a genuine gap explained honestly is recoverable, a fabricated record is not.
Do not fire off reports, notes or explanations into the sponsorship management system in a panic. Anything you submit becomes part of the record UKVI judges you on. Act deliberately, once you understand the case against you.
The response window set by the suspension letter is short and the first response is usually the only one that counts. Specialist advice at day two beats specialist advice at day eighteen.
What suspension does to your licence, why UKVI suspends, what the letter contains, how to build a response that answers every allegation with evidence, and the three ways it can end.
Read the suspension guide →The full consequences of losing the licence: your workers, your register entry, the cooling-off period, and what rebuilding towards a fresh application actually involves.
Read the revocation guide →With no right of appeal, the routes that remain: the written response at suspension stage, asking UKVI to correct clear errors, and judicial review with its pre-action protocol and strict time limits.
Read the challenge guide →For workers whose employer lost its licence: what the curtailment letter means, the realistic options inside 60 days, and the practical steps that protect your position from day one.
Read the workers' guide →The guidance now carries a mandatory revocation ground aimed at companies existing mainly to hold their founder's visa, with the arrangement described in UKVI's own worked example. The profile caseworkers look for, what protects a genuine founder-run sponsor, and the routes out.
Read the self-sponsorship guide → New ground, added to the guidance 20 May 2026Most enforcement traces back to the same handful of failures: late reports, thin records, salary slippage and roles that drifted from their certificate. The evidence standard UKVI applies, and the compliance rhythm that survives an unannounced visit.
Read the prevention guide →Routine sponsor licence compliance lives comfortably at Level 1. Reporting duties, record keeping, right to work checks and the day to day running of a licence are exactly the work advisers regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority do well, and the guides on this site are written to support it. Use them freely with your clients; that is what they are for.
Once a licence is under threat, or UKVI has taken action, the matter changes character. A suspension letter with revocation exposure, a mandatory ground such as the new self-sponsorship provision, enforcement tangled with employment law risk, and judicial review, where the conduct of litigation is a reserved legal activity, all call for specialist domain expertise. That is the work Lawyery exists for: solicitors who do sponsor licence enforcement daily, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA 8001894), acting from the first UKVI letter through the pre-action protocol to the Administrative Court.
We welcome referrals from IAA advisers and from other immigration legal professionals who need specialist knowledge in a tight situation. Referrals work the way you would want them to: we take the defined piece of work, keep you involved with your client's consent, and the client remains yours. If you are unsure whether a matter has crossed the line, a short call costs nothing and protects you both.
This site is run by Lawyery Limited, an SRA regulated law firm specialising in business immigration. If your licence or your visa is on the line, a short consultation now is worth more than a perfect letter later.
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