If your employer has lost its sponsor licence, the first thing worth knowing is that your permission to be in the UK does not end that day. The second is that the clock that does matter is the one written on the letter the Home Office sends you, not the one in a rumour going round a WhatsApp group.
What normally happens
When a licence is revoked, the Home Office writes to the workers sponsored under it. You are normally given a limited period to find a new sponsor, switch to another immigration route, or leave. The exact period, and what applies to you, depends on your own circumstances and on what the letter says. Read it before you act on anything anyone tells you, including this page.
That period is short enough to matter and long enough to use properly. The people who come out of it badly are usually the ones who lost the first two weeks to panic or to a recruiter promising something that was never theirs to promise.
Get free advice before paid advice
Immigration advice in the UK is regulated. That regulation exists precisely because people in this situation are worth a lot of money to someone willing to lie to them. There are organisations that will look at your actual case, for free, and they are listed on our support page: employment and immigration advice for migrant workers, crisis grants for care workers, and the helplines to call if you are being exploited.
If anyone asks you to pay for a Certificate of Sponsorship, that is illegal. Not a grey area and not a fee worth negotiating. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Modern Slavery Helpline, both on that page, are who to tell.
Then start on employers, not adverts
The instinct is to open a job board and apply to everything. It is the wrong order, and it is why people spend their notice period collecting silence.
Every employer able to take over your sponsorship is already on a public register, and it is a list you can start from rather than guess at. Working from the register to the vacancies means every application you send goes to somebody who could say yes. Working from the adverts means most of yours go to employers who were never able to help, and you find out weeks later or not at all.
A licence means able to, not willing to. But able to is the filter that removes most of the waste, and it is free to check.
Practical order for the first week
- Read the Home Office letter and note the date on it.
- Contact one of the free advice organisations. Do this before anything with a fee attached.
- Get your documents together: passport, BRP or eVisa details, previous Certificate of Sponsorship reference, payslips, your employment contract.
- Make a list of licensed care employers you could realistically travel to, from the register rather than from job adverts.
- Only then start applying, and keep a record of what you sent and when.
Nothing on this page is immigration advice, and we are not immigration advisers. It is a description of how the public records work and where the free help is.