Tier 2 licence approved

[Andy12]

Dear all,

First I would like to offer my kindest gratitude to people who are enriching this forum everyday.

I just wanted to share the experience of Tier 2 License application timeline that a company has gone through.

The company is an IT Software and Small networking consultancy. It started trading in September 2012. It was started with 5 people, 1 director, 1 IT manager and 2 analysts handling different client projects and 1 HR/admin officer. [There's a reason I am going through all these details, there are different paper works that need to be given in terms of business, if it is small, paper works are less]. My wife was working here and she was on Tier 1 PSW dependent. Luckily, the director agreed to go through with the process for Tier 2.

Being a small company, they applied with
1. Business formation certificate and directors report from HMRC
2. Office lease papers
3. Employee liability insurance papers
4. Bank letter stating that the company has a business bank account with them
5. Bank statements with all transactions (10 sheets).
6. VAT registration certificate

And the timeline was

Applied for license online: July 8th 2013
Response received: 9th July 2013
Fees taken : I don't surely know but think it's 9th July itself
Received letter about a pre-licensing visit: 2nd September 2013
Visit was done on : 09th September 2013
Response : 17th September 2013, awarded Tier 2 General 'A' Rating

The company has completed RLMT and will be applying for RCOS on the upcoming 11th Oct meeting.

The lady officer came to the visit was very much pleasant and thorough at the same time. She took around 150 minutes to check compliance and HR systems, this included 15 minute interview of the only migrant worker of the company.

From the experience my wife deducted,

1. It's easy to grab a license when your company is willing to go through the hassle. The small the company is, the less the hassle. The admin/HR personnel will be exhausted.
2. Lawfully trading (Lease papers, company papers) and physical office are very important.
3. Insurance papers must be in place too
4. Office should have adequate desks, chairs and stuff in place, the lady actually checked where everybody sits and even asked everybody to log-into their respective computers/laptops (!)
5. It does not matter if it a new company, if it has around (after tax/expenses) 100K in profit and thus can prove that it can pay wages, that's fine. Bank statements prove this.

I hope and wish those who are going through the experience will get positive results.

Andy