The UK Home Office Register of Licensed Sponsors Explained (2026)

What Is the Home Office Register of Licensed Sponsors?

The UK Home Office Register of Licensed Sponsors is an official public document that lists every employer currently authorised to issue a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) to overseas workers. It is maintained by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) and updated regularly as employers gain, lose, or have their licences suspended.

If an employer's name does not appear on this register, they cannot legally issue a CoS. This makes the register the single most important tool for any international job seeker targeting UK employment that requires a Skilled Worker Visa.

The register currently contains more than 60,000 entries spanning every sector of the UK economy, from the NHS and major universities to global banks, tech companies, care homes, and law firms.

Who Is Included on the Register?

The register includes employers who have been granted one or more of the following sponsor licence types:

Worker licences cover the Skilled Worker, Intra-company Transfer, and Senior or Specialist Worker routes

Temporary Worker licences cover seasonal worker, creative worker, charity worker, and religious worker routes

For most international job seekers targeting long-term UK employment, the relevant licence type is the Worker licence covering the Skilled Worker route. When using the register or the Hiredge Sponsor Checker, you can filter by route to confirm the specific type of sponsorship each employer holds.

How to Access the Register

The register is published as a downloadable spreadsheet on GOV.UK. You can find it by searching "register of licensed sponsors workers" on the government website. The file is updated roughly once per month and contains the following columns for each entry:

Organisation name

Town or city

County

Type and rating (for example, Worker, Premium)

Route (Skilled Worker, Intra-company Transfer, and so on)

The register is a raw data file with no search functionality built in. To find a specific employer, you need to open the spreadsheet and filter manually, which is time-consuming when the file contains over 60,000 rows.

Limitations of Using the Register Directly

The register is accurate but not especially user-friendly for job seekers. The main limitations are:

It tells you which employers can sponsor, but not which employers are currently hiring

Employer names in the register do not always match exactly how they appear in job listings (Amazon UK Services Limited in the register might appear as Amazon in a job advert)

The register is a snapshot in time; it may be several weeks out of date when you download it

There is no way to set up notifications for when new employers are added

Cross-referencing 60,000 entries against hundreds of job listings is manual work

How Hiredge Automates the Cross-Reference

Hiredge downloads and processes the Home Office register automatically every Monday. The data is normalised and stored in a searchable database that is used to power two key features.

The Sponsor Checker lets you search for any employer by name and instantly see whether they appear on the register, what their sponsor rating is, what visa route they are licensed for, and when their licence was last verified. You can check any employer in seconds without opening a spreadsheet.

The Sponsored Job Alert Filter cross-references every job listing in your alert results against the register before it reaches your inbox. Enable the "Visa Sponsorship Required" toggle when setting up your alert at hiredge.co.uk/job-alerts, and Hiredge will only send you jobs from employers confirmed as licensed sponsors. Every job in your alert email is badged "Visa Sponsorship Available" so you can apply with confidence.

Understanding Sponsor Ratings

Each employer on the register is assigned a rating. The two main ratings are:

A-rating means the employer is fully compliant with all Home Office sponsorship obligations. This is the standard rating for employers in good standing. Most large employers on the register hold an A-rating.

B-rating means the employer has been identified as needing to improve their compliance. An employer with a B-rating is on an action plan with the Home Office. You can still be sponsored by a B-rated employer, but it introduces a degree of uncertainty and the licence may be at risk of suspension.

When using the Hiredge Sponsor Checker, the sponsor rating is displayed on each company page so you can make an informed decision before applying.

When Licences Are Suspended or Revoked

The Home Office can suspend or revoke a sponsor licence at any time if the employer fails to meet their obligations. Common reasons include failure to track employees' attendance, paying workers below the required salary, or submitting false documentation.

If a licence is suspended, the employer cannot issue new CoS documents until their compliance issues are resolved. If a licence is revoked, workers already sponsored by that employer may face significant disruption to their visa status.

This is why Hiredge recommends always confirming an employer's current status directly before accepting an offer, even if the register showed them as licensed at the time of your application. The Hiredge Sponsor Checker shows the date the data was last synced, so you can judge how current the information is.