UK Sponsor Licence Renewal: April 2024 Changes and What They Mean for You

From 6 April 2024, the Home Office removed the requirement for most UK employers to renew their sponsor licence every four years. All Worker and Temporary Worker sponsor licences that were due to expire on or after that date have been automatically extended by 10 years from the original grant date. No application is required and no fee is payable. The change was applied automatically, your Sponsor Management System (SMS) account should show an updated expiry date.

If your licence was due to expire before 6 April 2024 and you completed a final renewal before that date, your renewed licence benefits from the 10-year automatic extension going forward. You will not need to renew again under the old four-year cycle.

If your licence expired before 6 April 2024 and was not renewed in time, your licence will have lapsed. A lapsed licence cannot be reinstated, you would need to apply for a new licence from scratch.

No. A sponsor licence that has been extended remains valid for 10 years from the original grant date, unless surrendered or revoked for non-compliance. The Home Office retains full authority to suspend, downgrade, or revoke a licence at any time if the sponsor fails to meet their obligations. The abolition of renewal does not reduce the compliance framework, it replaces the four-year renewal checkpoint with a continuous monitoring and audit regime.

UK Expansion Worker route

Licences under the UK Expansion Worker route are valid for a maximum of 4 years and cannot be renewed or extended beyond that period. At the 4-year limit, the employer must apply for a licence on a different route, typically the Skilled Worker Worker licence, to continue sponsoring overseas workers. The April 2024 automatic extension does not apply to this route.

Scale-up route

Scale-up Sponsor Licences are capped at 4 years maximum and cannot be renewed as Scale-up licences. At the 4-year limit, the employer must transition to a Skilled Worker or other Worker licence. Work Permit Cloud advises on the timing and application process for this transition.

• Complete and up-to-date Appendix D records for every sponsored worker, right-to-work check evidence, passport and visa copies, contact history, salary records, and absence logs.
• Current Level 1 and Level 2 User designations and current Authorising Officer appointment in the SMS.
• Prompt SMS reporting of all changes, sponsored workers' employment changes must be reported within 10 working days.
• Right-to-work checks conducted correctly at employment commencement and at all required follow-up intervals.
• Salary compliance, from 8 April 2026, sponsored workers must be paid at or above their required minimum salary in each individual pay period, not on an annual average.
• No recovery of sponsor licence fees, CoS fees, or ISC from sponsored workers, prohibited since 31 December 2024.

See our Sponsorship Duties page for the full obligations list and the UKVI Compliant HR Software page for tools to help manage them.