How to check whether a UK employer can sponsor you: using the register of licensed sponsors

You have found a role that looks perfect. The job ad says nothing about visas, the recruiter is vague, and you do not want to spend three interview rounds on a company that legally cannot sponsor you. There is a free, official way to check: the Home Office’s register of licensed sponsors.

This guide shows how to use it properly, how to read what you find and, just as important, what the register cannot tell you.

Why the register matters

To get a Skilled Worker visa, GOV.UK says you need a job offer from an employer that has been approved by the Home Office. Approved employers are also called sponsors. The employer gives you a certificate of sponsorship (CoS), an electronic record with a reference number that you use in your visa application.

An employer without a sponsor licence cannot issue a CoS. So the first filter in any sponsored job search is simple: is this organisation on the register?

Where to find it

The register is published on GOV.UK by UK Visas and Immigration under the title “Register of licensed sponsors: workers”. It is described as a list of organisations licensed to sponsor workers on the Worker and Temporary Worker routes.

It is a CSV file, so it opens in Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or any text editor.
It is updated almost every working day. The version we used for this article is dated 27 October 2026, and the file name includes the date.
The file is large. Today’s version is about 11 MB, so on a phone it is easier to use a laptop.

Always download a fresh copy rather than relying on one you saved months ago. Licences are granted, downgraded and revoked all the time.

What is in the file

The CSV has five columns:

Column	What it tells you
Organisation Name	The name the licence is held under
Town/City	Where the sponsor is registered
County	Often blank
Type & Rating	Licence type (Worker or Temporary Worker) and rating, e.g. Worker (A rating)
Route	The visa route the licence covers, e.g. Skilled Worker

Each row is one organisation and one route. An organisation licensed for several routes appears on several rows.

What today’s file looks like

We counted the rows in the 27 October 2026 file ourselves. These are simple counts from the published file, not official statistics:

143,175 rows in total, with 127,810 distinct organisation names.
123,170 rows are for the Skilled Worker route, covering 122,435 distinct organisation names.
By rating: 137,359 rows are Worker (A rating) and 101 are Worker (B rating). The rest are mostly Temporary Worker licences and a small number of provisional, Premium and SME+ entries.
Matching the Town/City field exactly, 706 distinct organisations are listed in Liverpool for the Skilled Worker route, and 35,324 in London.

The exact-match counting has one limit. It treats spelling variations as different places, so treat the town counts as approximate. Even so, they show how large the list is. Being on it is common. What matters is whether the specific employer you are talking to is on it, for the right route.

How to search it properly

Step 1: Find the employer’s legal name

The register lists the name the licence is held under, which is often the legal entity, not the brand you see on the careers page. For example, a company may trade under a short brand name while its registered company name ends in “Limited” or “Ltd”, or the UK operation of a global firm may have its own legal name.

The legal name is usually printed in the website footer, the privacy policy or the terms and conditions. You can also search for the company on Companies House.

Step 2: Search with partial words

In Excel or Google Sheets, use Find (Ctrl/Cmd + F) or filter the Organisation Name column with “contains”. Search for the most distinctive word in the name, not the full string. Small differences in punctuation (“Ltd” vs “Limited”, “&” vs “and”) will hide matches if you search for the exact name.

Step 3: Check the Route column says “Skilled Worker”

This is the step most people skip. An organisation can be licensed only for other routes, such as Global Business Mobility: Senior or Specialist Worker, Creative Worker or Charity Worker. If you need a Skilled Worker visa, check that the employer has a row with Route = Skilled Worker.

Step 4: Check the rating

GOV.UK’s employer guidance explains the ratings:

A rating: a full licence. An A-rated sponsor can assign certificates of sponsorship.
B rating: a licence that has been downgraded because the sponsor did not meet its responsibilities. A B-rated sponsor cannot issue new certificates of sponsorship until it completes a Home Office action plan and is upgraded back to an A rating. It can still issue certificates to workers it already employs who are extending their stay.
Provisional: used for UK Expansion Worker sponsors. It allows only one certificate, for the authorising officer.

GOV.UK also says a sponsor can have only two B ratings while its licence is valid. It loses the licence if it still needs to improve after the second action plan.

What this means for you: if a new employer is B-rated, it cannot sponsor you as a new hire until the rating goes back to A. Ask them directly about their timeline.

Step 5: Check the location makes sense

If the Town/City is nowhere near where the company says it operates, you may have found a different organisation with a similar name. Check it against Companies House.

If the employer is not on the register

That is not always the end of the conversation. GOV.UK says an employer that is not licensed can apply for a sponsor licence if it is eligible. The current fees are:

£611 for small businesses and charities;
£1,682 for medium and large organisations.

It usually takes around 8 weeks to process. Some employers will do this for the right candidate, especially smaller companies hiring their first international engineer. But you would be asking them to take on cost, paperwork and ongoing duties. The employer guidance lists responsibilities such as monitoring sponsored workers’ immigration status, keeping records and reporting changes. It is fair to raise this early, and it is also fair to move on if they are not prepared to do it.

What the register cannot tell you

Being on the register is necessary but not sufficient. It tells you nothing about:

Whether this particular job is eligible. Under the GOV.UK rules, the job must have an eligible occupation code. “Higher skilled” codes qualify, and “medium skilled” codes qualify only in limited cases.
Whether the salary is high enough. You usually need to be paid at least £41,700 a year or the going rate for your occupation code, whichever is higher. Lower rates apply in some cases, such as new entrants. Our DevOps and cloud salary comparison shows how this works for common tech roles.
Whether the employer will actually sponsor. Many licensed organisations sponsor only certain roles or none at the moment. The register shows the ability to sponsor, not willingness.
Whether your visa will be granted. GOV.UK states plainly that sponsoring someone does not guarantee a visa.

Questions worth asking a recruiter

Once you know an employer is A-rated for Skilled Worker, these questions save time on both sides:

“Is this role open to candidates who need Skilled Worker sponsorship?”
“Which occupation code would the role be sponsored under?” (Your salary threshold depends on it.)
“Have you sponsored people into similar roles recently?”
“Who pays the certificate of sponsorship and related costs?” GOV.UK says that for a Skilled Worker, the sponsor must pay the certificate of sponsorship fee itself.

That last point is also a useful red flag test. If anyone asks you to pay for a certificate of sponsorship, or to pay for a “guaranteed” sponsored job, stop and check the rules on GOV.UK before you hand over money.

Timing once you get an offer

When the employer assigns your CoS, GOV.UK says you must apply for your visa within 3 months of getting it. You also cannot apply more than 3 months before the job’s start date. Employers sponsoring people from outside the UK request a “defined” certificate, and GOV.UK says these are usually approved within one working day.

Quick checklist

Downloaded today’s register from GOV.UK
Searched by the employer’s legal name, using partial words
Found a row with Route = Skilled Worker
Rating is A (not B or provisional)
Town/City matches the company you are talking to
Checked your role’s occupation code and salary threshold
Asked the recruiter whether the role is open to sponsorship

The register takes five minutes to check and can save you weeks. Use it before the first interview, not after the offer.