Pre-licence priority service

[alasa995]

Hello,

I am new to this forum, so apologize if I posted in the wrong thread. I have sponsorship promises from a UK employer who started the sponsoring procedure back in late July this year (as they claim), In mid-September, the home office asked for further documents and they provided them. Until the day of writing this topic (15/11/2023), there was no response from the home office. Is this normal? I assumed that applications usually take 2 months, not almost 4 now.

I have asked them to go by the Pre-licence priority service, but they were not more successful, every day and just less than one second past 09:00 A.M. all the 30 allocated slots are taken, is this normal, or are we having a technical issue? Are we facing bots? They have tried to call the provided helpdesk contact number, but they were not successful, any other solution?

One more question is, what is the average time between a company having their license and an employer starting officially to work for them, I cannot keep waiting in the void like this until the end of January at most.

Thank you,

[alasa995]

Hello,

Has anyone gone by the Pre-license priority service lately? If so, please let me know. I have been trying to use the service for almost a week now.

[Frontier Mole]

The pre license priority service is massively over subscribed. There are several hundreds of prospective sponsors chasing the very limited spots. The service provision is usually maxed out in seconds so the chances of gaining a spot is minimal.

Timescale for licence approval - if all documents are submitted and there are no issues it is reasonable to expect an outcome in 8 weeks. Soon as there an issue and case diverts off the standard track then the case is deemed complex and it can take many weeks or even months for the case to conclude. This is particularly the case if there is a need to visit the sponsor on site.

Have you received absolute confirmation from your prospective employer they have applied and that the application has not been rejected?

[alasa995]

Thank you for your reply. Actually, my prospective employer is a UK subsidiary of my current employer, so basically I am dealing with my current employer, and yes, they do confirm going on with the procedure for some months now, without rejection, I believe they would tell me if so. What might be strange is that the company representative informed me that they have some person-locked license, like they have to pay every time they need to sponsor someone else, else more, they put some of my details in their application. I am afraid they messed up something with their application as this is their first time to have a license.

[alasa995]

**Update**: The company reached out to me and informed me that they successfully applied and paid for the priority service this morning.

[alasa995]

** Update 2**: My employer is sent a form from HO to fill out, the form contains details about the employee, birth date, nationality, the reason to ask for a sponsorship, and immigration status. He informed me as well that when applying for the license he was asked how many CoS he needed and he put 1, obviously because it was not mentioned if it is defined or undefined CoS at that stage. Assuming that the HO is asking for details on undefined CoS, and my employer made this mistake, does that affect our chances of getting the license? If we ever get the license, is it possible then to go by the defined CoS route? Since we have applied for the Pre-license priority service, and we got this response from HO, do we still expect a definitive response for the license within the 10-day window?

[alasa995]

**Update 3**: My employer informed me that we got the license approved on 02/12 (just 2 days after providing additional information on Pre-license) and are proceeding with assigning a CoS. I wish all the best for all the people that are still waiting.