Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS): what it is, and the scam to avoid

A Certificate of Sponsorship sounds like a paper. It is not. It is an electronic record a licensed company creates in the Home Office system when it offers you a real job. Its number goes into your visa application.

Because everyone needs one, a whole industry sells fake ones - and real-looking illegal ones. This guide explains how the real thing works so the fake ones become easy to see.

How a real CoS happens

• A company with a sponsor licence interviews you and offers you a real job.
• The company - not you, not an agent - creates the CoS in its Home Office account.
• The job on the CoS must be real, with real duties and pay that meets the rules.
• You use the CoS number in your visa application, usually within 3 months.

The scam: 'pay me £15,000 and I will arrange your sponsorship'

Selling a CoS is illegal. Full stop. A worker is never supposed to pay for their own sponsorship certificate, and a company that takes money for one is breaking the rules it signed.

Here is what actually happens: the licence being used this way gets revoked - the Home Office runs checks constantly. When it is revoked, every worker sponsored under it gets the 60-day letter. The person who paid £15,000 loses the money AND the visa. The agent disappears.

How to spot it

• Anyone who asks YOU to pay for a CoS - any amount - is doing something illegal.
• A 'guaranteed job' you never interviewed for is not a job. Real sponsors interview.
• Pressure to pay a deposit quickly 'before the quota ends' is theatre. There is no such quota panic for individual certificates.
• 'The salary on paper will be different from what you get' means illegal from day one, and it is your visa on the line.

What it should cost you

Your costs as a worker are the visa application fee, the health surcharge, and things like translations. The sponsorship itself - the licence, the certificate - is the company's cost, not yours. Finding the real jobs costs at most a subscription like ours: £20 a month, not £15,000.