Recent Changes to the UK's Home Office Sponsor Guidance: Passing on fees to employees

On 9 April 2025, the Home Office implemented significant changes to the sponsor guidance on the recouping of immigration fees and salary assessments for sponsored workers. These changes reflect a commitment made in the Written Ministerial Statement of 28 November 2024 to enhance worker protections and ensure fair treatment of sponsored employees. 

Prohibition on recouping fees from sponsored employees

Sponsors are now expressly prohibited from passing on the following fees to sponsored employees:

• Sponsor licence application fee and any associated administrative costs
• Application fee to add additional routes to an existing sponsor licence
• Certificate of Sponsorship fee
• Immigration Skills Charge fee (if applicable)
• Additional premium services or priority service fees, associated with the sponsor licence (e.g. priority allocation fee)

This prohibition applies to sponsored migrants issued with a Certificate of Sponsorship on or after 31 December 2024 under the Skilled Worker route. The same restriction applies to sponsors on the Global Business Mobility, Minister of Religion, International Sportsperson, Scale-up, and Seasonal Worker routes where a Certificate of Sponsorship is assigned from 9 April 2025. 

Visa application fees and Immigration Health Surcharge are excluded from the prohibition at this time. 

Definition of “associated administrative costs”

The guidance has also been updated to clarify “associated administrative costs” means any costs incurred by sponsors to obtain, use or maintain the sponsor licence.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Fees for premium services or priority services for sponsor licence applications, changes of circumstances requests, or assigning, requesting, or applying for a Certificate of Sponsorship
• Fees for legal advice related to applying for, using or maintaining your sponsor licence, or assigning, requesting or applying for a Certificate of Sponsorship
• 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 you provide such advice or services to the worker directly

Revocation of licence

The Home Office has been clear in assigning responsibility for paying the sponsorship fees listed above to sponsors. If a sponsor recoups, or attempts to recoup, by any means, the fees listed above from a sponsored worker, the Home Office will normally revoke the sponsor licence. 

This will result in the loss of all sponsored foreign workers and a new sponsor licence application would be subject to a cooling-off period of up to at least 12 months.

Deductions from salary assessment

The guidance has also been updated to reflect the recent change in how UKVI will assess whether sponsors workers’ salaries meet the salary thresholds under the Skilled Worker route. For further information on these changes, please refer to our article: Changes to the Skilled Worker route in the UK assessment of salary - Bird & Bird.

There are significant ambiguities around how investments made by a foreign worker to the sponsor organisation will be treated by the Home Office. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and provide any update as more information becomes available.  

Recommendations for employers

We strongly recommend employers review their sponsorship practices to ensure compliance with the new rules, including:

• Reviewing your existing client contracts and policies which include provisions for recouping sponsorship costs and ensure only permitted costs are being recouped from sponsored employees.
• Allocating sufficient funds to cover all sponsorship-related expenses without passing them on to employees.
• Removing any applicable deductions from salaries before assessing whether they meet the relevant thresholds.
• Investing in training HR and compliance teams on the new rules and update the relevant resources and processes to reflect the same.

We would be more than happy to advise further and assist with any of the points raised above. Should you require any assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Business Immigration team.