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on September 28, 2024
Read Time: 9 Minutes
With the longstanding Sole Representative visa – officially the “Representative of an Overseas Business visa” – having closed to new applicants on 11th April 2022, the present moment seems an opportune one to reflect on the success, or otherwise, of the visa category that replaced it.
The new sponsored route was the UK Expansion Worker (UKEW) visa, under the Global Business Mobility (GBM) banner. This visa category is meant to enable foreign nationals to come to the UK, so that they can set up a branch of an overseas business that has not yet begun trading in the UK.
However, while the broad principle behind the UKEW visa seems straightforward enough, in the two or so years since this visa category’s launch, the practicalities of dealing with this route have been anything but simple for many companies. This might seem a curious situation for a visa category that is meant to help attract international investment to the UK.
In this article, then, our specialists in UK immigration law at Cranbrook Legal will take a closer look at the issues that have arisen with this visa route, as well as the extent to which the UKEW category can be regarded as a success overall.
For many years, if a business from outside the UK aspired to launch a UK operation, the visa route for achieving this was relatively obvious – the Sole Representative visa. As indicated by the unofficial name given to this visa route, it enabled one senior employee of an overseas business to apply for a UK work visa, which would then enable them to establish and run a subsidiary or branch of the organisation in the UK.
This limitation to just one visa was a much-commented-on drawback of the Sole Representative visa route, given that foreign companies investing into the UK frequently require a team to arrive together in order to launch the UK business.
So, when it became apparent that the new, sponsored UKEW route would allow as many as five skilled workers to come to the UK to assist with launching and running the new UK office of a foreign company until it was fully trading, this development was welcomed by many firms. It meant that overseas businesses seeking to put in place foundations for a UK presence could have a team from their headquarters “on the ground” in the UK at a relatively early stage.
However, the Sole Representative visa route also brought headaches for the Home Office. Introduced on 1st October 2009, this visa existed outside the UK’s points-based immigration system, the first version of which had been implemented in 2008. This reflected the difficulties the department then had in finding a place within the points-based structure for foreign businesses that wished to expand into the UK.
Fast-forward to April 2022, and the Home Office had evidently decided it had found a solution to this conundrum. The current system is that the overseas business must apply for a UK sponsor licence in order to take advantage of the UKEW visa route – after it has put in place a UK “footprint”, but before it has begun actively trading in the UK.
There are a few different ways in which a given foreign business can achieve a UK “footprint” for the purposes of bringing workers to the country on this visa:
If this requirement for overseas companies sounds like a delicate balance to strike, that’s because it very much is – it is of critical importance for the overseas company to get its timing right.
For many businesses – especially smaller enterprises that might find it challenging to meet such specific criteria – the requirement for the overseas business to already have a UK branch, subsidiary, or premises, as well as a detailed business plan, but without having yet started to trade, is paradoxical, and a major barrier to their use of the UKEW visa category.
Candidates for the UKEW visa can apply up to three months in advance of the date they expect to begin working in the UK. This date will be stated on their Certificate of Sponsorship.
It will also be necessary for the applicant to prove their identity and provide their documents. They may require an appointment in order to do this; they will be told whether they will need one when they start their application. If so, they will need to allow extra time.
Once the application has been submitted online, with the applicant having proved their identity and supplied their documents, they can typically expect a decision from the Home Office within about three weeks, if they are outside the UK. Applicants for this visa who are in the UK can anticipate an approximately eight-week wait.
It may be possible for a given UKEW visa applicant to get a faster decision, using the Home Office’s “priority service” or “super priority service”. The first of these services costs £500 on top of the visa application fee, and enables the applicant to usually receive a decision within five working days. The second service costs £1,000 in addition to the visa application fee.
If the applicant for a UKEW visa chooses the “super priority service”, they will usually get a decision by the end of the next working day after their appointment to prove their identity, provided that their appointment is on a weekday. If their appointment is at the weekend or on a bank holiday, they can typically expect to receive a decision two working days after this.
As if the above need to establish a UK “footprint” prior to recruiting workers via this visa route wasn’t onerous enough for many overseas companies contemplating expansion into the UK, the UKEW route also requires the employer to obtain a sponsor licence from the Home Office.
Given that the UK Expansion Worker visa is a route that is supposed to help draw investment into the UK, one might have expected the sponsor licence application process for overseas firms to be relatively streamlined and efficient.
Instead, the Home Office heavily emphasises the need to gather various documents to support the sponsor licence application, which is made an even slower experience by the lack of a pre-licence priority service for UKEW sponsor licence applications. Where this pre-licence priority service is available for certain sponsor licence applicants, it allows the given organisation to pay an additional fee to have their application considered within 10 working days.
The cumbersome and slow sponsor licence application process, then, is another factor serving as a deterrent to overseas businesses that wish to quickly begin operations in the UK. What’s more, even once the licence is granted, it carries a provisional rating at first, with the business being required to upgrade when the sponsored worker arrives in the UK. This is a further inconvenient and time-consuming element for employers to deal with.
A holder of the UK Expansion Worker visa will need to be paid at least £48,500 per year for their role in the UK, or the “going rate” for their job – whichever is higher.
Eligible jobs under this visa category each have an occupation code, with each occupation code having its own annual “going rate”. The Home Office’s Global Business Mobility: going rates for eligible occupations table, which contains the most up-to-date information, can be found on the GOV.UK website.
Please note that an applicant for this visa will need to have worked for their employer outside of the UK for a minimum of 12 months, unless they satisfy one of the below criteria:
An overseas national who relocates to the UK on a UK Expansion Worker visa will be able to stay in the country for whichever is the shorter of:
Holders of this visa do have the option of extending it by 12 months. However, the maximum period of time they would be able to stay on this visa in the UK is two years. This presents the prospect that if they intend a longer-term stay in the country, switching to an alternative immigration route – such as the Skilled Worker visa – will be necessary.
Unfortunately, as the initial cohort of UKEW visa holders neared the stage at which they needed to extend their one-year visas in 2023, reports emerged that many businesses were struggling with the visa extension process.
It became apparent that the Home Office was requesting such further documentation as evidence of PAYE registration or a UK bank account, which businesses that are still only just putting down foundations in the UK can sometimes struggle to provide.
There have been some situations, then, of businesses effectively being penalised for not yet satisfying the Skilled Worker sponsor licence criteria, even though the Home Office’s guidance indicates they should have two years in which to establish themselves.
Unfortunately, the mid-term report for the UK Expansion Worker visa very much reads: “could do better”. With such difficulties as the slow and awkward sponsor licence application process and less-than-easy visa extension experiences having marred some overseas companies’ perceptions of this immigration category, questions have been raised as to whether this visa route is fulfilling the purposes for which it was established.
If, then, you are considering the UKEW route for your own organisation, you would be well-advised to begin the preparation and application processes far in advance of the time you expect to begin any UK operations. Furthermore, you should be braced for the unexpected as far as potential application barriers are concerned.
You might even ultimately decide that an alternative visa category – such as the Skilled Worker route – would be more suitable for your business’s needs. To discuss this with our award-winning experts in UK immigration law here at Cranbrook Legal, please don’t hesitate to call us on 0208 215 0053, or to complete and submit our online contact form.
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