Do I have to work for my business?

Hello,

I plan on applying for the Entrepreneur visa. I have over £200K which is disposable to the UK. I have the following questions:

- If I start a business there, do I have to work for the business? In other words, would they let me just be the owner and hire people to run the business?
- What if I buy a franchise like BurgerKing/KFC/Subway? Is that allowed? Or do I have to make up my own business?

MSKF wrote:Hello,

I plan on applying for the Entrepreneur visa. I have over £200K which is disposable to the UK. I have the following questions:

- If I start a business there, do I have to work for the business? In other words, would they let me just be the owner and hire people to run the business?
- What if I buy a franchise like BurgerKing/KFC/Subway? Is that allowed? Or do I have to make up my own business?

Have you read the guidance yet?

Hello Naveed,

Yes actually I have read the guidance. Under the section CONDITIONS OF STAY (pages 14/15), it says the following:

Policy guidance

Permission to stay under this route will be subject to the following conditions:
a. no recourse to public funds (which means you will not be able to claim most
benefits paid by the state);
b. registration with the police, if this is required by paragraph 326 of the Immigration
Rules;
c. no employment other than working for the business or businesses that you have
established, joined or taken over but working for such business(es) does not include
any work you do which is effectively employment with another business (for more
details– see Annex A, A41), and
d. no employment as a professional sportsperson (including as a sports coach).
e. study subject to the condition below.

So it says that I cannot work outside of the businesses that I have established. Meaning that If I apply showing say a computer business, I should only work there and nowhere else.

However, this doesn't mean that I MUST work for my business. That is why I am confused. Do you know where it says in there that if I own the business, I have to be running it too? What if I hired people to run the business and sat in my home watching TV all day? Would that be legal as long as the business is working well? That was the essence of my question.

Hi,

Yes you can only work for your own business e
G as a director of company and need to employee two full time employees or equivalent.

Hiring people to maintain your business, paying their wages, that on its own requires some kind of your involvement. If you were to show that you did all that and afterwards had to do absolutely nothing, I personally think it's fine, according to what it says in the guidance. You will have done some work for your business and none for any others - seems like you'd tick the box here

Well, obviously I will need to get involved. However, if I have people working for me, it might leave very little for me to do besides just may be getting weekly updates on how things are going. Depending on the competency level and trust that I have on the managerial staff, I could frankly not work at all and just be at home.

The main reason I asked this question is because of what the Guidance(page 15) says right after this section. Let me quote:

Policy Guidance

You are permitted to study, but you will need to obtain an Academic Technology Approval Scheme
(ATAS) certificate for the course/research and present it to your education institution before you start
your study if:
(a) you are over age 18 (or will be over 18 by the time your leave expires); and
(b) your course is one of the following:
(i) a Doctorate or Masters degree by research in one of the disciplines listed in paragraph 1 of
Appendix 6 of the Immigration Rules, or
(ii) a taught Masters degree or other postgraduate qualification in one of the disciplines listed in
paragraph 2 of Appendix 6 of the Immigration Rules, or
(iii) a period of study or research in excess of 6 months in one of the disciplines listed in paragraphs
1 or 2 of Appendix 6 of the Immigration Rules at an institution of higher education where this forms
part of an overseas postgraduate qualification.

According to Appendix 6, the Masters/PhD options already have topics that I am interested in. So now what? Can I be doing my degree and instead of doing odd jobs, just oversee my business operations from time to time? They didn't even say that I can only study part-time. So clearly, they seem like they are fine with me working very little to say the least.

I'm guessing that 5/6 year cap on Tier 4 doesn't apply here since clearly this is also a permit to study as long as you study the things they have on that list.

I find this very interesting because I've always heard that one isn't allowed to study on Entrepreneur Visa. When I heard that, I reasoned that it's probably because they demand you to be engaged as a full-time employee of your business. But after reading these things in the Guidance, I am officially confused.

I think you can work for your business, watch tv at home and do whatever you want. The only thing you cant do is you cant work for someone else. This is all they mean

If you have trust worthy staff, you can stay home forever doing whatever you want. Thats fine
But you cant say that i have trust worthy staff so i left my business on to them and working in sainsbury part time to earn extra money. That will be wrong

haha! Yeah, I understand that I am not allowed to work elsewhere. That's as clear as day.


However, what interests me is the possibility of running my business as a director, hiring people for the virtually all roles and meanwhile getting a postgraduate degree. I never knew that was possible. The guidance seems to imply that one can actually be studying postgraduate courses and doesn't say that it has to be part-time! The type of courses listed there are all 1-3 year courses. If one worked full-time all year long, when would they study? Therefore, I am concluding that one doesn't have to work full-time all year long.

Paragraph 1 under Introduction on page 6 of the 01 September 2015 T1E Policy Guidance uses the phrase "actively involved", but neither in the policy guidance nor in the T1E HO staff guidance 05 August 2015 nor in the Immigration Rules part 6A: the Points-based system (paragraphs 245AAA to 245ZZE) is it defined. This confuses even more.

However, this permission to study has been introduced since April 2015. Does this apply for those who got the T1E visa prior to April 2015, is it retroactive? Any thoughts please?

If you want to study full time for full 3 yrs. then you are more of a student than an entrepreneur. Hence you can go for tier 4 student visa. Because purpose of this visa is business not education. But contrary to that you are also allowed to stay out of UK for 6 months in every 12 months. Which essentially means UK I is confused thenselves

Haha! Good to see that I am not unreasonably confused. If they can let someone stay outside of UK half the year, they surely don't aren't expecting you to be there working full-time 12 months.


@attahaas That's what I've noticed too. May be I should email them asking for a definition of that.

hahah<<<< as you know that this is entirely for business purpose regardless of your financial position or your interest to chill out,however,there is some permission attached to the condition of the entrepreneur visa where you can be enroled as a student in one of the listed catergories; provided you meet the requirments of educational institution in first place ;for instance,if you are interested to undertake a doctorate course,it is very likely required you to have a study visa rather than rely on the condition of this visa that you can study on it.

I would advise first to negotiate it with the institution because when you apply the institute might do it confirm from the HO.So its better to have clear option in hand before you split it.

Your next confusion about actively engaged that is to say that you have a company established in the UK,with required funds being invested and the company is trading under your directorship.

@Mr Legal:

Why would doing a 3 year doctorate course require me to switch to Tier 4 when Tier 1E already lets me study a doctorate degree? Are you saying that because you think that the university might want to see a Tier 4 visa? If so, then I don't think the university will mind. All the university really cares about is your academic competence and the finances. Due to Home Office requirement, they have to validate that the person starting their studies there has the permit to study. When Tier 1 already gives you permission to study, why would they stop you?

My academic track record is exceptional. Therefore I don't doubt if I will get accepted or not. My primary goal is to establish the business and then IF IT IS POSSIBLE, get another higher degree.

Even by your definition of "actively engaged", I still don't know about the minimum number of hours I have to work. If there are no set minimum number of hours, and if I don't really need to invest a lot of time into running the business, then I'd have the privilege to go for full time education and part-time working(for my own business).

Then probably you could havegone to investor visa. There you do not need to be actively engaged at all

Investor visa isn't that cheap, mate. It's like a million pounds I think. I can't afford to throw that away like that.

It being expensive is your problem not of ukvi. What would you say if i say that i cant afford to get entrepreneur visa so i will get tourist visa and start doing business here. Its the same as saying i cant afford investor visa, so i will get entreprenur visa and start doing investing activities

What are you talking about?

I wasn't asking them to change the entrepreneur visa rules so that I may study full time!! That would have been an absurd request. What I was saying is that it looks like the current rules allow people to do so. Which means that in theory, I should be able to establish a type of autonomy in my business and move on to studying further if I wanted to.

Then i think you havwn't read the MAC report thats why you didnt get what i was talking about

This is the first time I've heard about anything called MAC report. Can you please enlighten me on the issue based on the report? Where am I going wrong? Everything I deduced were based on the Tier 1 Guidance. Are there additional rules/requirements that are laid out in the MAC report?

10020132 wrote:Then i think you havwn't read the MAC report thats why you didnt get what i was talking about

Mac report gives recommendations and its not what you should look as requirements unless incorporated in immigration rules

naveediiqbal wrote:

10020132 wrote:Then i think you havwn't read the MAC report thats why you didnt get what i was talking about

Mac report gives recommendations and its not what you should look as requirements unless incorporated in immigration rules

I found this in the MAC report:

Businesses with limitted growth potential: Franchises/corner shops/other activity with minimal economic impacts beyond providing an income for the migrant entrepreneur.

My plan is to start with one franchise and eventually make the business about buying franchises. A bit relieved to know that at least until the policy guidance adopts the things in the MAC report, I don't have to be worried.

This even endorses my claim that you haven't read it. Anyways, lets leave it here. And you have a rightto do whatever you want to. I have given you my honest opinion so you wont regret

10020132 wrote:This even endorses my claim that you haven't read it. Anyways, lets leave it here. And you have a rightto do whatever you want to. I have given you my honest opinion so you wont regret

No point in reading any thing except relevant immigration rules.

Lolz
Then i wish good luck to you and especially your dependants

10020132 wrote:Lolz
Then i wish good luck to you and especially your dependants

I don't understand why are you getting personal
Sorry I don't need your wishes. What I stated is a fact and your application is always decided based on relevant immigration rules and if not then you can fight it legally for a fair decision based on these rules.