Skilled Worker or Senior or Specialist Worker visa

A UK subsidiary bringing a specific person over from the parent has two sponsored visa routes to choose between, as an alternative to hiring locally from a standing start. Both sit under the same sponsor licence and cost a broadly similar amount to apply for. What they ask of the person, and what they give back, differ sharply, and picking the wrong one either strands the assignment short of the time it needs or puts someone on a permanent footing when the plan was always to send them home.

The two routes

Both let an approved sponsor bring one named person into one named job in the UK. The difference is who that person already is to the group.

• Skilled Worker is for anyone taking up a genuine UK job, whether they have worked for the group before or not. There is no prior-service test.
• Senior or Specialist Worker, part of the Global Business Mobility set of routes, is for someone the group already employs outside the UK, moving to the UK on an internal transfer within the same employment.

Skilled Worker

The salary has to clear £41,700 a year or the published going rate for the occupation's Home Office code, whichever is higher. A lower threshold of £33,400 applies to a new entrant to the occupation, a role on the Immigration Salary List, or a STEM PhD holder. There is no requirement to have worked for the sponsor before, and no requirement that the role existed before the application. The visa costs £819 for a stay of three years or less, or £1,618 for longer, plus the Immigration Health Surcharge of £1,035 for every year applied for. After five years on the route, the person can apply to settle permanently in the UK.

Senior or Specialist Worker

This route needs the salary to clear £52,500 a year or the going rate, whichever is higher, and it adds a condition Skilled Worker does not have: the person must have worked for the sponsor's group outside the UK for the 12 months before the application. That requirement disappears entirely for anyone paid £73,900 a year or more. The maximum stay is five years in any six-year period, stretching to nine years in any ten if the salary is £73,900 or above. At no point, however long the person stays, does this route lead to settlement. It is built to end.

One sponsor licence, either route

A company does not need to choose between the two routes before it applies for the right to sponsor anyone. Skilled Worker and Senior or Specialist Worker both sit under a single Worker sponsor licence, alongside Minister of Religion and International Sportsperson, so one licence lets the company use whichever route fits the person in front of it, case by case. The licence costs £611 for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,682 for a medium or large one, decided against the same Companies Act test used for audit exemption, and takes around eight weeks to come through. A UK subsidiary that has not started trading yet is a different case again: moving someone over to set it up uses the UK Expansion Worker route instead, under a Temporary Worker licence, capped at twelve months plus one twelve-month extension, with no route to settlement either.

The bank account condition a new subsidiary trips on

A sponsor that has been trading in the UK for under 18 months must send evidence of a UK corporate or business account with a bank or building society that is both authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. A personal account, an overseas account, or an account with a provider that is FCA-registered as an e-money institution but not PRA-authorised as a bank, does not satisfy this on its own. This is the condition a newly incorporated subsidiary is most likely to fall over, because the fast option in the account-opening guide is often exactly that kind of provider. Check the status of the account the company is using before the sponsor licence application goes in, so a query over the bank does not stall the whole application.

A worked example

An Indian software company incorporates a UK subsidiary and wants to send its head of delivery for an eighteen-month assignment to set up the UK team, at a salary of £68,000, after four years with the group. The salary clears the £52,500 Senior or Specialist Worker threshold, and four years is well past the 12-month service requirement, so the route is available without needing to rely on the £73,900 exemption. The assignment has an end date and no intention to settle, which is what the route is for, and the company applies for a Worker licence and assigns a certificate of sponsorship under this route.

Contrast that with the same company hiring a UK country manager locally, at £58,000, with no prior employment by the group at all. The salary clears the Skilled Worker threshold comfortably, but Senior or Specialist Worker is closed to them regardless of salary, because they fail the 12-month service test and are paid well under the £73,900 figure that would excuse it. Skilled Worker is the only route that fits a new UK hire with no group history, and it is also the one that gives them a path to settle if the role becomes permanent.

The decision rule

1. No prior employment by the group, or want the person to be able to settle: use Skilled Worker, and check the salary clears £41,700 or the going rate.
2. Already employed by the group outside the UK, assignment has an end date, 12 months or more of group service, or paid £73,900 or more: use Senior or Specialist Worker.
3. Employed by the group for under 12 months and paid under £73,900: Senior or Specialist Worker is closed for now, so use Skilled Worker, or wait for the service record to build.
4. Subsidiary not trading yet: use UK Expansion Worker, which sits under a Temporary Worker licence.
5. Company trading under 18 months: confirm the bank account is both PRA-authorised and FCA-regulated and have the statement ready before the licence application is made.

One Worker licence covers the first three cases, so the licence application does not have to wait for the routing decision to be finished. The secondments and sponsorship service sets out the income tax and social security position alongside the immigration route, and the employing people guide covers what happens once whoever travels is on the payroll.