T2 best route for overseas Owner to come to UK regularly??

[SamanthaDee]

Good morning

I cant find any related queries to mine so please accept my apologies if this has already been asked previously.

We are a recently set up UK office (just 3 employees) of a very large Indian parent company, and the owner is wanting to be able to come to the UK with relatively no restriction on duration of stay or regularity of the visits. I don't think a Visitor visa is an option as he will be working attending meetings with clients and so on, nor the T1 investor option as he hasn't / isn't investing personally so as far as I can see this only leaves T2 sponsorship as an option.

Is T2 a valid option for someone who may, from one month to the next not be in the UK but then may come over for a week, go back to India for a month, come back for a month, and so on......I didn't think so as they have to work a certain amount of hours per week but the Business Helpdesk have advised me that this is the best option? I guess the other question is would we actually get a sponsor licence only being a new, small company?

Apologies for the potentially silly question in the company of experts , I have had experience of T2 visas but I had a lot of support from an outside company and the placements were pretty straightforward 2 year secondment.

Any help or pointers very gratefully received. I have tried to look through the guidance on T2 visas but the 100000 page documents are extremely hard to interpret for a lay person.

Thanks in advance.

[Wanderer]

Business visa?

I'd have said T2 ICT but I think that's more or full time working in UK - something for others to expand on though.

[SamanthaDee]

A reply yay!! thank you for taking the time.

That's what I was thinking re: full time work so was a bit surprised when the Business Helpdesk suggested that route as I did state in my email that he would be here on and off, more off than on.....plus he wouldn't be in receipt of a UK salary while here, he would purely be here just to get a feel for how we are progressing, maybe visit a few clients while here, have business lunches etc.

[vinny]

As a standard visitor, he is permitted to:

Business – general activities
5 A visitor may:
(a) attend meetings, conferences, seminars, interviews;
(b) give a one-off or short series of talks and speeches provided these are not organised as commercial events and will not make a profit for the organiser;
(c) negotiate and sign deals and contracts;
(d) attend trade fairs, for promotional work only, provided the visitor is not directly selling;
(e) carry out site visits and inspections;
(f) gather information for their employment overseas;
(g) be briefed on the requirements of a UK based customer, provided any work for the customer is done outside of the UK.
Business – corporate
Intra-corporate activities
6 An employee of an overseas based company may:
(a) advise and consult;
(b) trouble-shoot;
(c) provide training;
(d) share skills and knowledge; on a specific internal project with UK employees of the same corporate group, provided no work is carried out directly with clients.
7 An internal auditor may carry out regulatory or financial audits at a UK branch of the same group of companies as the visitor’s employer overseas.

Is he planning to do more than the above?

[manci]

Is he planning to do more than the above?

If he wants to do more than the permitted activities for a visitor, as quoted by vinny , Tier 2 ICT is also a possibility but the UK company would need to obtain a T2 ICT sponsor licence first. If he then successfully applies for a T2 ICT visa he can travel as much as he wishes and his salary can be paid in India.

[Frontier Mole]

Assuming Tier 2 ICT

T2 is not intended for the occasional business visitor but it can be used as such. I personally would not recommend it as it becomes time limited and there are certain restrictions that an owner may fall foul of.

Time limited long term ICT would give five years free movement but after that there would be a one year cooling off period.

Ownership - if a potential tier 2 owns more than 10% of the shares of a Sponsor business this excludes them from Tier 2 General but unsure of the ICT side.

[manci]

from the T2 policy guidance:

You must not own more than 10% of your sponsor’s shares if the sponsor is a limited company unless you are applying under the Intra-Company Transfer category or your Certificate of Sponsorship shows you will earn £155,300 or higher.

[SamanthaDee]

Thank you so much for the very helpful replies. So glad I found this website and wish I knew about it a year ago, life would have been so much easier!

As it turns out he will just be coming over just to nosey at how we are getting on, maybe go to a few client meetings, lunches and so on, and I've discovered he already has a Visitors Visa which I now know will be fine for this purpose.

I'm getting the distinct feeling he actually wanted me to look into how he can apply for residency, just like that

Thanks again for the very helpful posts, much appreciated.