How to compare sponsor licence providers

The eight criteria

Ask every provider the same questions, in writing.

Our answers

The same eight criteria, answered for Wesbridge Associates.

Regulator

Immigration Advice Authority — details on our disclosures page

Professional fee

Fixed, quoted in writing after a case assessment

Home Office fees

Itemised separately and paid by you directly

Case ownership

A named regulated adviser, end to end

Eligibility review

Included, before any application is submitted

Appendix A and key personnel

Included in the application scope

Compliance handover

Written sponsor-duties handover on grant

Post-licence support

Available as a separate, separately priced engagement

Complaints

Published procedure, escalation to the regulator

Home Office fees, for reference

The same for every provider. Only professional fees differ.

Worker licence — small or charitable sponsor

£611

Worker licence — medium or large sponsor

£1,682

Temporary Worker licence

£611

Priority service (optional)

£750

Certificate of Sponsorship, per worker

£525

Immigration Skills Charge, per worker per year

£480 small or charitable / £1,320 medium or large

How to actually run the comparison

A short process, done before you speak to anyone at length.

• Write down the same set of questions and send them to every provider you are considering, so answers are directly comparable.
• Ask for answers in writing, even if the first conversation happens by phone.
• Check the regulator's register yourself rather than taking a claimed registration number on trust.
• Ask for a fixed fee quote that separates professional fees from Home Office fees before you disclose more detail than necessary.
• Compare what is included, not just the headline price, since two very different quotes can turn out to cover very different amounts of work.
• Keep a copy of every written answer, since it becomes useful if a dispute arises later about what was promised.

Doing this before you commit to any one provider takes an afternoon, and it converts a set of sales conversations into something closer to a like-for-like comparison. It also tends to expose, quickly, which providers are willing to put commitments in writing and which prefer to keep things verbal.

What each criterion looks like done well, and done badly

Concrete signs, not vague reassurance.

What a good written quote actually contains

Check for these elements before you sign anything.

• Scope of work

  A specific list of what is included, for example eligibility review, key personnel setup, Appendix A document review, drafting, submission and correspondence, so nothing is assumed.

• Fee structure

  The professional fee stated as a fixed amount, with Home Office fees listed separately at their published rates.

• What triggers extra cost

  A clear statement of what falls outside the fixed fee, for example a compliance visit follow-up, a request for further information, or work arising from a change in your business structure mid-application.

• Timescales the provider controls

  How long the provider expects its own preparation work to take, distinct from Home Office processing times, which no provider controls.

• Cancellation and refund terms

  What happens to fees already paid if you decide not to proceed, or if the provider concludes partway through that you are not eligible.

• Regulatory details

  The regulator's name and the firm's registration number, so you can verify the engagement is with an authorised entity.

Questions to ask about compliance handover and post-licence support

What happens after the licence is granted matters as much as getting there.

• Will I receive a written summary of my sponsor duties and reporting deadlines when the licence is granted, or is that left to me to find in the guidance myself?
• Is help preparing for a UKVI pre-licence compliance visit included in this fee, or charged separately?
• If my licence is later selected for a compliance audit, is support available, and on what basis is it priced?
• Do you offer renewal reminders, or is tracking my licence expiry left entirely to me?
• If my allocation of Certificates of Sponsorship runs low, is help increasing it part of this engagement or a new one?
• What happens, in practical terms, if the licence is refused: is there a further fee for another attempt, and what changes in the approach?

None of these questions require the provider to guess at outcomes. They simply ask the provider to describe its own process and its own pricing, which is information any competent firm should be able to give you without hesitation.

If a provider will not answer in writing

Take that as the answer.

Some providers are happy to discuss fees, scope and regulation at length on a call but become evasive when asked to confirm the same points by email. This is worth treating as a warning sign in its own right, since a written record protects both sides and a firm with nothing to hide has little reason to avoid it.

If a provider tells you a written quote "depends on the call" or "will follow once you sign up", ask again before paying any fee, and if the position does not change, take that as grounds to look elsewhere. You are entitled to compare providers before committing, and a firm that resists a like-for-like comparison in writing is making that comparison harder for a reason.

Why the Home Office decision process limits what any provider can promise

No representative decides your application; the Home Office does.

A sponsor licence application is assessed by UK Visas and Immigration against published guidance covering your organisation's genuineness, its HR systems, its suitability to hold the licence, and the roles it intends to sponsor. No representative, however experienced, has any influence over that decision beyond the quality of the application submitted. This is why promises of guaranteed approval, or fixed approval dates ahead of the Home Office's own service standard, are not something a genuine adviser can honestly offer.

What a good provider can control is the quality and completeness of what is submitted: whether the eligibility position is checked honestly before an application is made, whether key personnel are correctly selected and registered, whether Appendix A documents meet the specified requirements, and whether the organisation is prepared for a compliance visit if one is called. All of that reduces the risk of an avoidable refusal. None of it changes the fact that the decision itself, and its timing, belongs to the Home Office.

Understanding this distinction is the clearest way to judge a provider's claims. A firm that talks about the quality of its preparation work is describing something it actually controls. A firm that talks about approval rates or guaranteed timescales is describing something it does not.

Weighing price against scope

The two numbers that actually matter are what is included and what is fixed.

When two quotes differ substantially, the difference is almost always explained by scope rather than by one provider simply being more efficient than another. A lower fee that excludes the eligibility review, the document check, or the compliance handover is not cheaper once you account for the extra work you will need to do yourself, or the risk of a refusal that a fuller review might have caught in advance.

A useful discipline is to list, side by side, exactly what each quote includes against the eight criteria set out above, then compare the fixed prices only once the scopes match. That removes the temptation to compare a full-service quote against a bare-bones one as though they were the same product.

Warning signs

• No registration number, or a number that does not appear on the regulator’s register.
• A guaranteed approval, or a success rate with no stated method.
• A quoted approval time faster than the Home Office’s own published service standard.
• A quote that does not separate Home Office fees from professional fees.
• Advice to describe a role under an occupation code its duties do not support.
• Any suggestion that a sponsored worker can pay the licence fee or Immigration Skills Charge.
• No published complaints procedure.