UK Skilled Worker Visa Solicitors

After completing five years in the UK on a Skilled Worker visa, most people become eligible to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), which offers permanent settlement rights. To qualify, you must meet the required salary level, demonstrate continuous residence, and satisfy other standard eligibility criteria. If you’re not yet able to meet the ILR requirements, you can choose to extend your Skilled Worker visa instead. However, it’s worth noting that future immigration policy changes may lengthen this extension route to a 10‑year pathway before settlement becomes available.

This is perhaps the most common question we get regarding the skilled worker visa and there is no direct answer. The Home Office publish a list of eligible roles known as the ‘skilled occupation list’. As a broad rule, these are roles that are at RQF level 6 or above. In UK terms it means that it’s the type of job that requires a degree or degree level experience to qualify for. There are also roles of a lower skill level but for which we have a skill shortage in the UK. These are known as ‘temporary shortage occupations’ and have a time limited eligibility for the route.
 
You cannot assess whether a job is eligible for this route by title alone. When considering eligibility, it is the substance of the job description that assessed, not the title itself. Every job in the UK can be categorised under a ‘standard occupation code’ defined by the office of national statistics. Your employer will declare which standard occupation code the job description falls under, and that is the ‘occupation’ for the purposes of qualifying for the skilled worker visa.

Most roles allow you to bring family members. The exception to this is those employed as care workers or senior care workers. Your family members will need to apply for ‘PBS Dependant’ visas. Only your partner and children who are under the age of 18 at the date of application can be considered for eligibility under this route. Your partner can be either your spouse or your unmarried partner.
 
Generally, a married partner will be considered to meet the requirements automatically provided the marriage is legally recognised in the jurisdiction it took place and there are no other factors that give the Home Office a reason to doubt the legitimacy of the relationship. Unmarried partners will be eligible provided that you have been in a relationship equivalent to marriage for at least two years. Note that this does not mean that you have been a couple for two years, it means that the relationship has been akin to marriage for that time. You will usually be expected to have lived together for this time, but the Home Office are sensitive to cultural and logistical issues that prevent this.
 
Your children will usually be able to join you but there are some notable exceptions. First, adult children are not eligible. Your children must be under the age of 18 on the date of application. If your children join you in the UK in their late teens but become adults while in the UK, they are usually permitted to extend and/or settle provided they can show that they are not living an independent life. The other exception is where only one parent is coming to the UK. The general rule is that both parents must be in, or moving to, the UK for the child to be eligible. If one parent remains outside of the UK, the child must remain with them. While there are some limited exceptions to this, these are extremely narrowly accounted for and usually involve the other parent being deceased, in a profession (such as the military) where it would be dangerous for the child to remain with them, or if they are entirely absent from the child’s life.

When you are granted a visa in the UK, the Home Office will tell you how long your visa is valid for. You must make a further visa application or leave the UK before this expiry date passes. A skilled worker visa is valid up to a maximum of five years at a time but the precise length is dependant on how long your employer is willing to sponsor you. Most employers sponsor workers for either three or five years because three years is the longest a person can be sponsored before the cost of the application significantly increases, and five years offers the best value on costs overall if the employer knows they want to sponsor you long-term.
 
If your employer sponsors you for less than the maximum five years then your visa will usually expire 14 days after the date sponsorship is listed as ending on your certificate of sponsorship. After your visa expires, provided your employer is willing to continue employing you in line with the requirements of the route, you can continue to extend your visa until you qualify for indefinite leave to remain.

If you lose your job your visa will be shortened, a process known as ‘curtailment’. Your employer is required to notify the Home Office within 10 working days of you leaving your job. Once this notification is made, the Home Office will send a ‘letter of curtailment’ to your last known physical or email address. It’s important that you keep your contact details with the Home Office up-to-date because the letter will be considered served as long as it is sent to the details they have for you, regardless of whether the letter is actually received.
 
The letter of curtailment will give you 60 days in which to either apply for a different visa or leave the UK. If you have not taken one of these actions by the end of the 60 day period then you will be considered an overstayer. You will also lose any supplementary work permissions as soon as you leave your employment, as these provisions are conditional on you continuing to work in the job you are sponsored to do.

There are three categories in which a refusal is more likely to happen for the skilled worker visa. The first is that a mistake is made on your certificate of sponsorship. The second is that you make a mistake regarding your job details on the application form. The third is suitability issues.
 
The first two reasons are linked, the certificate of sponsorship must match your details exactly. If there is a discrepancy between the two of them, then the application will be refused. Common mistakes on the certificate of sponsorship can be typos in the Applicant’s name or passport details, or job details that do not meet the minimum requirements for the visa.
 
Common mistakes on the Applicant side are putting the wrong occupation code, or listing their role as being in the wrong category such as the immigration salary list or temporary shortage occupation. Suitability issues relate to whether you have a prior criminal record, complications in your immigration history, or other issues of character and whether these have been disclosed appropriately.

The Skilled Worker visa replaced the old Tier 2 (General) visa when the UK introduced its new points‑based immigration system in December 2020. Although the purpose of the route remains broadly similar—allowing UK employers to sponsor overseas workers—the rules, terminology, and eligibility criteria were updated.
Today, anyone referring to a Tier 2 (General) visa is effectively talking about what is now known as the UK Skilled Worker Visa, which is the current route for sponsored employment in the UK.