Can you work for a third-party on a Skilled Worker Visa?
Under the points-based immigration system, to get your Skilled Worker Visa, you must be awarded 70 points in total, 20 of which mandatory points for sponsorship. One of the requirements which must be met for you to be awarded the points for sponsorship is that the job you are being sponsored to do must not amount to you actually working for a third-party.
This does not mean that you, as a skilled worker, cannot be supplied by your sponsor to another organisation. Your sponsor, the one issuing the Certificate of Sponsorship and having full responsibility for your duties, functions and outcomes, or outputs of the job, can have a contract with a client of theirs to deliver a service or a project within an agreed timescales. You may be assigned to work on the project or to deliver the service on behalf of your sponsor, for the length of the contract, at your sponsor’s client’s premises. As long as you remain employed by your sponsor and the duration of the contract is limited, everything is all right.
The Appendix Skilled Worker indicated that the decision maker must not have reasonable grounds to believe that you are actually hired to fill a temporary or permanent position with a third-party who is not your sponsor. Therefore, your sponsor cannot be an agency placing you to fill a vacancy within a third-party company which has full responsibility for deciding your duties, functions and outcomes or outputs of the job.
Also, the decision maker must not have reasonable grounds to believe the job amounts to contract work to undertake an ongoing routine role or to provide an ongoing routine service for a third party who is not the sponsor, regardless of the nature or length of any arrangement between the sponsor and the third party. According to the Home Office guidance, this means that, if you carry out work for a third party on your sponsor’s behalf, you must be contracted to provide a time-bound, non-routine service or project on your sponsor’s behalf. You must be contracted to provide a service or project which has a specific end date. After the end date, the project must not continue, or if it is a service, this must no longer be provided by your sponsor.
If you want to apply for a Skilled Worker Visa and need my specialist advice, feel free to contact me. Please note that I am an accredited immigration adviser, not an employee of the UK Visas and Immigration. I charge fees for the advice provided.