How to Read the UK Register of Licensed Sponsors Before You Apply for a Job

Imagine you are a backend developer in Bengaluru. You have sent forty applications to UK companies in two months. Each one took an evening: a new cover letter, a tweaked CV, a portal that logged you out twice. You have heard nothing back.

Then a recruiter messages you on WhatsApp. A London firm loves your profile. They can sponsor you. There is just a small fee to "secure the certificate".

You want to believe it. But a quiet question sits in your stomach. Can this company even sponsor anyone?

You can answer that yourself, for free, in a few minutes.

The short answer: Look the employer up in the register of licensed sponsors. The Home Office publishes it on GOV.UK as a file anyone can download. Search for "register of licensed sponsors: workers". If the employer's legal name is not in that file, it holds no worker sponsor licence and cannot give you a Certificate of Sponsorship, whatever a recruiter says. If it is there, read three more things before you celebrate: the rating, the routes listed, and the date of the file.

Think of the register as a guest list. Being on it gets the employer through the door. It does not mean they may bring you in tonight. A B-rated sponsor is on a Home Office action plan and, as published, cannot assign certificates to new workers until its rating is restored. A sponsor licensed only for a Temporary Worker or Global Business Mobility route cannot hire you into an ordinary Skilled Worker job. And the file is a snapshot. Licences are added, downgraded, surrendered and revoked between publications.

This guide is general information, not immigration advice. The Home Office and UK Visas and Immigration publish the register and the rules. Reconfirm every rule below on GOV.UK before you act. An adviser registered with the Immigration Advice Authority, or a practising solicitor or barrister, should confirm how it applies to you.

Who should read the register

• A nurse, engineer, developer, accountant or care worker applying to UK jobs from abroad, who needs to know which of the fifty companies on their list can legally hire them.
• Someone with a UK offer who wants to check the licence before resigning at home or paying anyone.
• Someone deciding whether a sponsored route is realistic at all. If that is you, also read the UK route for engineers with no job offer.

Student sponsors are in a separate register. A university listed there tells you nothing about whether it can sponsor you as an employee.

What you need

Very little. Nobody has to grant you access.

• The employer's exact legal name. This is the biggest cause of false "not found" results. Companies trade under a brand but hold the licence under a registered entity, often with "Group", "Holdings" or "UK" in the name. Get it from Companies House first.
• A spreadsheet tool. The file has far too many rows for find-in-page on a preview.
• Your occupation code, or your best guess. The register does not tell you whether a job meets the skill and salary rules. Pairing the two makes it useful.
• A date habit. Write the download date on every list you build.

What the columns mean

The worker register is a flat table: organisation name, town or city, county, type and rating, and route. Headings change over time, so trust the file you download over any article, including this one.

Read all five. Each one can end the search on its own.

A-rating and B-rating

As published, an A-rating is the normal state of a compliant licence. A B-rating means the sponsor fell short of its duties and is on a time-limited action plan, with a fee to pay and conditions to meet. As published, a B-rated sponsor can keep supporting workers it already sponsors but cannot assign certificates to new workers until it returns to an A-rating.

So if your target employer is B-rated, your application is on hold, whether anyone tells you or not.

Already have an offer from one? Do not resign and do not pay anyone. Ask the employer in writing whether they can assign a certificate for your role right now.

An A-rating shows compliance on the publication date and nothing else. It says nothing about pay, or whether the employer has ever sponsored anyone.

The route column decides whether they can hire you at all

Most people skim this column. Think of a driving licence. A motorcycle licence is a real licence, but it does not let you drive a bus. A sponsor licence covers only the routes listed against it.

Skilled Worker. The main route for a UK employer hiring into an ordinary job. If you apply to advertised jobs from abroad, this is almost certainly the one you need. The skill, salary and English rules have tightened repeatedly since 2024, so read our UK Skilled Worker visa guide and then check GOV.UK itself.

Global Business Mobility. Routes for moving staff into the UK inside an existing company: senior or specialist transfers, graduate trainees, teams setting up a UK presence, service suppliers, secondments. Most need a qualifying link to the overseas business, often a period of employment with it, and have historically not led to settlement the way Skilled Worker can. An employer with only this licence cannot hire you off the open market.

Temporary Worker. Fixed-term, purpose-limited work: creative, charity and religious workers, government exchange schemes, seasonal work in some sectors, international agreement roles. They have their own rules on switching and dependants. They are legitimate, but not what you think you accepted if you wanted a Skilled Worker job.

Here is how it goes wrong. A candidate finds the name, sees an A, stops reading, and applies for months to a company whose licence covers a Temporary Worker scheme for summer staff. The name was there. The route was never right.

The town column shows an address, not the job

The town and county show the sponsor's registered address. For a small business that is usually where you would work. For larger ones, often not. A care provider registered in Croydon may run homes across five counties. A logistics group registered in Leeds may have the vacancy in Bristol.

Filter by city and you delete national employers who could place you exactly where you want. Get the job location from the advert and the employer.

How to spot a new, changed or lapsed licence

The Home Office republishes the file regularly but gives job seekers no change log. You can make one, and it is the most valuable thing you can do with this data.

Keep every file, named with its date. Compare each new one with the last. Even a simple comparison shows three things:

1. Names that are new. A newly licensed sponsor. They applied recently, usually because they plan to hire from abroad, and few applicants know about them yet. This is the most useful list you can hold.
2. Names that disappeared. The licence ended by surrender, expiry or revocation. The file cannot tell you which. Stop treating that employer as able to sponsor, and if you have an application in progress, ask directly.
3. Ratings or routes that changed. An A that became a B. A Temporary Worker entry that gained Skilled Worker. Neither is announced to candidates.

Two cautions. A name can seem to vanish after a merger or rebrand, so look for a similar entity first. And licences can be suspended or revoked between publications. The file is like a photo, not a live camera. Use it for shortlisting, never as a live status check.

What it costs and how long it takes

Reading the register costs nothing. It needs no account, no adviser and no agent. Scammers depend on you not knowing that.

A filtered target list takes an evening. Applying blind costs months.

Before you spend an evening on lists, check whether a sponsored route suits you at all. The free eligibility check asks 6 questions (age, education, experience, English, target countries) and gives you a quick read on your options in 2 minutes.

The filter routine: from register to target list

Follow these steps in order. The result is a list of employers who can lawfully sponsor someone in your job. That is different from a list of employers with vacancies.

Step one: download and date it. Get the current file from GOV.UK. Never use a third-party copy, because you cannot tell how old it is or what was edited.

Step two: filter the route column first. Keep Skilled Worker entries and set the rest aside.

Step three: move B-rated entries to a separate tab. Do not delete them. Recheck them next time.

Step four: narrow by sector, not town. Filter by the kind of organisation you can work for: NHS trusts and private healthcare, engineering consultancies, software companies, accountancy firms, care groups. If you must narrow by place, do it last and keep national employers.

Step five: check against your occupation code and salary rules. Does the job you would realistically get sit at the skill level Skilled Worker requires? Would the employer plausibly pay both the general threshold and the going rate for your code? Both are set by the Home Office and have moved since 2024, so take them from GOV.UK on the day. An employer who can sponsor but cannot pay the going rate cannot hire you.

Step six: match the entity to the vacancy. A listed holding company does not always mean a particular subsidiary or franchise can issue a certificate.

Step seven: date the list and set a recheck. Recheck against a fresh file before anything you cannot undo: resigning, moving, paying a fee, turning down another offer.

Step eight: only now, look for vacancies on each employer's own careers page. The register shows who may sponsor, never who is hiring.

If your occupation falls outside the current rules, it is better to know early. For care work, read the UK care worker route and its alternatives before you build a list at all.

When this does not work

It does not tell you who is hiring. Holding a licence creates no duty to use it. Employers weigh cost, timing and compliance before sponsoring any single role.

It does not tell you whether your job qualifies. Skill level, occupation code, salary threshold and going rate are separate tests in the Home Office rules.

It is not live, and not complete. Suspensions happen between publications, student sponsors are elsewhere, and routes needing no sponsor sit outside it. And a licence existing does not make an offer genuine. That second question is where people lose money.

The scam pattern this register exposes

Sponsorship is the bottleneck, so fraud gathers there. Someone offers you a UK job. A certificate is "available" for a fee: placement, processing, or "reserving the slot". You must pay to a personal account or in cryptocurrency, quickly, before someone else takes it.

Two facts make this easy to check. A sponsor licence belongs to the employer, and charging a worker for the certificate of sponsorship itself is not permitted under the sponsor rules. So a demand that you pay for a certificate is a warning sign on its own. Verify that on GOV.UK. Also, immigration advice in the UK is regulated. Paid advisers must be regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, which took over the register of advisers from the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, or be a practising solicitor or barrister regulated by their own body. Each regulator has a free searchable register. Check it on the regulator's own site before you pay anything.

Free checks: look the employer up yourself, not from a recruiter's screenshot. Refuse any payment for a job offer or certificate, or to a personal account. Treat any "guaranteed visa" promise as a reason to stop. Call the employer on a number you found yourself.

Our guides to verifying an overseas job offer and avoiding immigration scams explain who may charge you for what.

Common mistakes

1. Searching the brand, not the legal entity. Get the registered name from Companies House.
2. Reading the rating and ignoring the route. An A-rated Temporary Worker licence cannot give you a Skilled Worker job.
3. Filtering by town. It deletes national employers.
4. Treating the file as live. It is a dated snapshot.
5. Assuming licensed means hiring. Most licence holders sponsor rarely.
6. Skipping the occupation code and salary check.
7. Using a third-party copy, or paying someone to search it. The real file is free and takes an hour to learn.
8. Assuming a lapsed entry means wrongdoing. Licences end for ordinary business reasons. Ask, and do not speculate publicly.

What to do next

Download today's register and run the eight steps above. Take the current skill level, salary threshold and going rate for your code from GOV.UK the same day. Check whether your qualification will be recognised for the role, because a licensed sponsor cannot fix a registration problem. Re-download the register before any decision you cannot undo.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the UK register of licensed sponsors published?

On GOV.UK, as the register of licensed sponsors for workers, a free downloadable file with no account needed. Download it from GOV.UK itself, because copies on job boards and agency sites are often stale.

What does a B-rating mean for my application?

As published, a B-rated sponsor is on a Home Office action plan and cannot assign certificates to new workers until the rating is restored, though it can keep supporting existing staff. So a new hire is on hold. Confirm the current effect on GOV.UK and ask the employer in writing.

The employer lists Global Business Mobility. Can they hire me?

Not as an ordinary outside candidate. These routes move people inside an existing company and generally need a qualifying link to the overseas business, such as a period of employment with it. If Skilled Worker is not listed, the employer cannot sponsor you through that route.

How often is the register updated, and how do I spot changes?

The Home Office states the current publication frequency on the GOV.UK page. There is no candidate change log, so build your own: save each download with its date and compare new files with old ones.

Should I pay an agent to find sponsoring employers?

The register is free, so a paid list of names buys something you can make in an hour. Regulated advice on your route can be worth paying for. Check the adviser is registered with the Immigration Advice Authority or is a practising solicitor or barrister. Never pay for a certificate of sponsorship, never pay to secure a job offer, and never pay into a personal account.

If a company is A-rated and lists Skilled Worker, am I safe to apply?

Sponsorship was legally possible on that publication date. Three questions stay open: is the employer hiring, does the role meet the current skill and salary rules for your code, and does the licence still stand when your offer arrives?

The bottom line

The register answers one question precisely: which organisations held a worker sponsor licence, on which routes, at which rating, on the day the file was published. Read all five columns and it saves you months. Read only the name and it can send you after employers who were never able to hire you.

Reconfirm every rule on GOV.UK on the day you rely on it, and have an adviser registered with the Immigration Advice Authority, or a practising solicitor or barrister, confirm your case before you act.

Not sure the sponsored route is right for you? Start with the free eligibility check.