British employers that hold Skilled Worker sponsor licences are facing an unprecedented wait of up to 18 weeks for the Home Office to approve routine requests for additional “undefined” Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS). Immigration advisory firm Five Star International, which monitors sponsorship processing times, reported today (20 July 2026) that standard-service allocations that were previously turned around in two to four weeks are now routinely taking four months or more. Undefined CoS are the digital work permits used to extend existing sponsored employees’ permission to stay or to hire migrants who are already in the UK. If a sponsor exhausts its annual allocation before more are granted, it cannot lawfully issue new CoS – halting contract extensions, internal transfers and time-critical project hires. Large multinationals that run annual graduate-intake schemes have been forced to delay on-boarding, while SMEs report losing preferred candidates who move to rivals able to issue CoS immediately via the priority route. A limited priority service does exist – costing £200 per request and aiming for a five-working-day decision – but slots are released each working day at 9 a.m. and typically sell out in under three minutes. Employers that miss out must wait until the following morning, creating what immigration lawyers describe as “sponsorship roulette”. The backlog appears to stem from Home Office staff being redeployed to clear asylum casework and implement the new eVisa system, although officials have not confirmed this. Specialists are advising HR and mobility teams to conduct an urgent audit of sponsored headcount and visa-expiry profiles, then submit allocation requests at least six months in advance. Businesses with graduates starting this autumn are being told to apply now – even if numbers are not yet finalised – and to keep documentary evidence (such as workforce plans and recruitment pipelines) on file to justify the volume requested. The delay adds to the cost and complexity of UK talent deployment only three weeks after the government’s latest Statement of Changes raised salary thresholds for many Skilled Worker roles. Mobility managers say the uncertainty risks damaging the UK’s attractiveness for regional headquarters and R&D projects that rely on rapid intra-company moves.
Source: Five Star International
