Employer guide
Employer guide
Revocation ends the licence with immediate effect. There is no right of appeal, your sponsored workforce is put on notice, and the door to a fresh application closes for at least a year. This guide sets out what actually follows, without softening it.
Your licence is cancelled and your entry removed from the register of licensed sponsors. Every unused certificate of sponsorship dies with it. You cannot sponsor anyone, on any route, and any in-flight visa applications relying on your certificates will be refused. The sponsor guidance (Part 3, version 05/26) is explicit that there is no right of appeal against the decision.
Your sponsored workers receive their own letters. In the usual case their permission is cut short to 60 days, or left as it stands if less than 60 days remains. They have done nothing wrong, but the clock runs against them all the same. If you employ sponsored workers, sending them to the workers' guide on this site is a concrete thing you can do for them today.
Employment law does not pause either. Curtailment does not by itself dismiss anyone: you still owe your workers proper process, and right to work considerations need handling carefully as permissions expire. Redundancy, notice and discrimination risks all live inside this window, and a revocation mishandled on the employment side can cost as much as the licence itself.
After revocation you cannot simply reapply. A cooling-off period applies: at least 12 months from the date of revocation for a first revocation, and 24 months where a licence has been revoked more than once. Where unpaid civil penalties are in the picture, the bar runs until they are paid and can stretch considerably longer. The precise period is set out in the guidance and in your revocation letter; check both, because the start date and the length turn on your specific history.
Plan on the basis that sponsored recruitment is closed to you for the full period. Businesses built on sponsored labour, most visibly in care, hospitality and technology, need a workforce strategy for that gap, not just an intention to reapply.
Sometimes, and only quickly. Because there is no appeal, the routes are asking UKVI to revisit a decision built on a clear factual error, and judicial review, which tests the lawfulness and fairness of the decision rather than rehearing the merits. Judicial review claims must be brought promptly and in any event within three months, and the realistic groundwork, the letter before claim under the pre-action protocol, needs to move well before that. The challenge guide covers the routes, the timetable and an honest view of the prospects.
Be wary of anyone who guarantees a result. Courts give the Home Office significant latitude in sponsor licensing, and a challenge succeeds on process, evidence and speed, not indignation. The decision whether to litigate is a commercial one: weigh the cost and the odds against the cost of the cooling-off period.
A judicial review timetable is measured in months. Your workers' curtailment is measured in days. Even a strong challenge will usually not resolve before their permission expires, so the workforce plan and the legal challenge have to run in parallel, not in sequence.
A fresh application after revocation is scrutinised against the reasons the licence was lost. Every failure in the revocation letter needs a documented fix: new procedures in writing, responsibilities assigned, systems in place and evidence that they run.
Operate as if licensed for months before applying: HR files at Appendix D standard, right to work checks done and evidenced correctly, mock audit completed and its findings closed out. The application should present a system already working, not one promised.
Apply after the cooling-off period has fully expired, with key personnel who are clean on suitability checks. Where individuals were central to the failures, their continued role in the licence needs honest thought before UKVI does the thinking for you.
Within days of a revocation there are decisions worth money: challenge or accept, how to handle the workforce, when and how to rebuild. Lawyery will tell you plainly which are worth taking.
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