Your sponsor lost its licence? What to do with your 60 days

The email from the Home Office arrives and your stomach drops. Your company's licence is gone, and with it, the visa you built your life on.

The person who runs this site got that same email. His sponsor's licence was revoked. He and his brother and his friends switched to new sponsors in time. This guide is the plan he wishes he had on day one.

First: read your letter, know your date

When a licence is revoked, the Home Office normally cuts your visa short and gives you a window - usually around 60 days, or the time left on your visa if that is shorter - to find a new sponsor, switch to another route, or leave the UK.

Your exact date is in YOUR letter or email. Read it twice. Write the date somewhere you see every day. Everything else in this guide runs against that clock.

Days 1-3: set up your search properly

• Fix your CV: one page or two, your real experience, the same words the job ads use.
• Gather documents now, not later: passport, BRP or eVisa share code, references, certificates. New sponsors move faster when you are ready.
• Decide your realistic route: care and health jobs need £25,000, most other jobs need £41,700 or more.

Days 3-50: apply only to real sponsors

This is where time dies for most people: applying to companies that can never sponsor anyone. With 60 days, you cannot afford one wasted application.

Check every company against the Home Office register BEFORE applying. Check the ad does not say 'no sponsorship'. Check the pay clears the minimum. Then apply fast and follow up.

Interviews will come. Be honest about your situation: sponsors who hire visa workers deal with this constantly, and a clear 'my current sponsor lost its licence, I have until [date]' is respected more than vagueness.

Do not do these things

• Do not pay an agent for a certificate of sponsorship. Selling a CoS is illegal, and a licence built on selling them is exactly the kind that gets revoked next.
• Do not overstay your date hoping something comes. That damages every future application.
• Do not panic-apply to a hundred random ads a day. Twenty checked applications beat two hundred blind ones.

If the clock runs low

Talk to a registered immigration adviser (OISC-registered) or a solicitor about your options - other routes, a visitor switch, or how to leave and return cleanly. That advice must come from a licensed professional, not from a job site, and not from Facebook.

What we do

SponsorJobUK exists for exactly these 60 days. Every job on the site already passed the licence, route, rating and pay checks, and new ones reach subscribers by email the day we find them. The site was built by someone who survived this list himself.