Have UKBA frozen COS?!

[GrantAW]

Hi,
I received this email from my HR department who are handling my work permit to Tier 2 renewal and I don't entirely understand what it means. Can anyone confirm this is affecting all companies and not just mine?

Thanks,
Grant

Hi Grant,



I have some very disappointing news.



The UKBA have made an error with all A rated sponsors therefore we cannot issue any Certificate of Sponsorships at this time. This is out of our control and we have contacted the UKBA who have confirmed their error and stated they have frozen all Certificate of sponsorships for every company. They have no idea when they will rectify this as they are dealing with all the companies in the UK.



I cannot advise you when this situation will be resolved as the UKBA have told us they are working on the problem but they cannot guarantee when this will happen.



As you can imagine this has affected a lot of people including yourself. As far as I know once the system has been restored, we can then apply for your Certificate of sponsorship and then submit your postal application.



Once I have some further news i will be in contact.



Kind regards

[The Station Agent]

I deal with CoS every day and as far as I am aware this is nonsense. They have given most companies a zero allocation and make them complete a form and state their case for each CoS they want to issue. They then sit and decide once a month which companies can issue CoS and which can't. This defeats the whole purpose of the way the system was designed, but there you go. They have to apply and get approval before they can issue a Tier 2 CoS.

[GrantAW]

Thanks for the quick reply.

From speaking to them it appears there is some sort of online system where they apply for the COS? They said this was down which was causing the delays ... have you used this system (or know of it) in the past couple of days?

[The Station Agent]

yes, it works fine.