The 60-Day Playbook

What to do in the first week after your UK sponsor loses its licence.

Which of these is you

• The emails have landed and my certificate is cancelled. Start at "What has actually happened", then do move one tonight.
• My employer says it is only suspended. Start at "Suspended is not revoked".
• I am in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Start at "If you are not in England".
• Somebody is asking me for money to sort it out. Start at "What quietly goes wrong".

Read your line first. The rest of the page will still be here after you have sent tonight's email.

What has actually happened

When a sponsor loses its licence, the government's own page states two consequences for the worker: the certificate of sponsorship is cancelled, and permission is limited to 60 days, or to however long remains on the visa if that is less than 60. Leaving your job and leaving the UK is the default outcome unless a new visa application is made inside that window. There is one exception in the other direction: a worker who was involved in the reasons the licence was lost has their permission withdrawn immediately rather than curtailed.

Source: gov.uk, Employees: if your visa sponsor loses their licence.

When the clock starts, and it is not when you read it. Staffordshire County Council, which runs one of the regional support teams, publishes the mechanics for workers: UK Visas and Immigration sends two emails, one telling you the licence has been revoked and one cancelling your certificate of sponsorship, and the countdown runs from the date UKVI sent the email, not the day you opened it. Its page also says plainly: get advice before you decide to leave.

Source: Staffordshire County Council, What happens when your sponsor's licence is revoked.

So the first thing you do is find the email and write its send date at the top of a page. That date, plus 60, is your real deadline. Everything below is built backwards from it.

Suspended is not revoked

A suspension is different from a revocation, and people lose weeks panicking about the wrong one. During a suspension, a worker already in post can keep working, a worker who has arrived but not started can start, and an extension application already submitted is paused rather than refused. The Home Office guidance sponsors themselves read says the same thing from the other side: workers being sponsored at the time of the suspension who have valid permission "will not be affected, unless or until we decide to revoke your licence" (paragraph C9.4).

Source: Workers and Temporary Workers: guidance for sponsors, part 3 (version 05/26).

Suspension is still your warning shot. Do move two and move three this week anyway. You lose nothing by having a second employer interested.

Move one, tonight. Email your regional team

England runs a funded support offer specifically for adult social care workers whose employer has lost its sponsor licence. It is not a helpline that reads the rules back to you. The published offer covers advice on your visa status and your employment rights, help finding a new sponsoring employer, help accessing financial support if wages went unpaid or the job ended, and mental health support including buddying and help to access counselling.

Send four things: your name, the address you are currently living at, your contact details, and the name of the provider sponsoring your visa.

Copy this, fill the four blanks, send it before you sleep:

Subject: Sponsor licence revoked, request for support

Hello,

My employer's sponsor licence has been revoked and I am asking for support under the international recruitment offer.

Name: [your full name as it appears on your visa] Address I am currently living at: [full address and postcode] Contact details: [your mobile number and this email address] Provider sponsoring my visa: [employer's registered name]

I received the email from UKVI on [date on the UKVI email]. I would be grateful for help finding a new sponsoring employer.

Thank you, [your name]

East of England, by area. This is the one region that splits, so find your council and use its address:

• Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Thurrock, Southend: essexsuffolkhertsir@essex.gov.uk
• Norfolk: internationalsupport@norfolkcareassociation.org.uk
• Milton Keynes: iwsupport@worksforus.org.uk
• Cambridgeshire: irsupportcambs@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
• Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire, Luton: ir.displacedworkersupport@blcb.co.uk
• Peterborough: irsupport@peterborough.gov.uk

Source: gov.uk, Support offer to international ASC workers whose employer's sponsor licence has been revoked (updated 12 May 2025).

If you are not in England

Adult social care is devolved, and the support page says so directly: this offer applies in England only, and if you live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland you should refer to information from the relevant devolved administration. Your 60 days are identical wherever you live in the UK, because immigration is not devolved. What changes is who runs the help desk. So in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, moves two and three below are the whole plan, and you start them tonight instead of tomorrow.

Move two, this week. The message that moves an employer

Providers who recruit a worker in your situation can have their licence and certificate of sponsorship applications expedited free of charge. That sentence is on the same government support page, and most managers have never read it. Put it in your first message rather than saving it for an interview:

Hello [manager's name],

I am a [your job title, for example senior care worker] currently sponsored by [employer name], whose sponsor licence has been revoked. I am looking for a new sponsoring employer.

The government's published support offer says that applications for licences and certificates of sponsorship can be expedited free of charge when an employer takes on an international worker in this situation.

I have [number] years of experience in [setting, for example residential dementia care], and I can send my CV, my references and my current visa details today.

[Your name], [phone number]

One line to hold on to while you negotiate. The employer pays for the licence, not you. gov.uk states it in the plainest words it ever uses: you must pay the licence fee yourself, and your licence may be revoked if you ask the sponsored worker to pay the fee or any costs linked to your application. The fee itself is £611 for a small or charitable sponsor, about ₦1.1m, and £1,682 for a medium or large one, about ₦3.1m. Most licence applications are dealt with in under 8 weeks, and an employer can pay an extra £750, about ₦1.4m, for a decision in 10 working days.

Source: gov.uk, Apply for a sponsor licence.

If a manager asks you to fund any part of that, you have learned something important about them in your first week, for free.

Move three, before you accept anything. Check them yourself

The government publishes the full register of licensed sponsors as a spreadsheet, updated most working days. The click path, in ninety seconds on a phone:

1. Open the register of licensed sponsors.
2. Tap the CSV file, "Register of Worker and Temporary Worker licensed sponsors". It is a large file, about 10MB, so use wifi.
3. Open it and search the employer's name. On a phone, use the "find in page" option in your browser menu, or the search icon in your files app.
4. Read the two columns beside the name: the category of workers they can sponsor, and their rating. A care home that only holds a Temporary Worker licence cannot sponsor you as a care worker.
5. If the name is not there at all, they cannot sponsor you, whatever they said on the phone.

The register was last updated on 17 August 2026 when this page was checked, so download a fresh copy on the day you need it rather than reusing last week's.

What a new application inside 60 days can actually be

"Make a new application" is the phrase that saves you, and nobody explains what it can contain. Here is what the official pages allow, and what each one costs you in time.

A new sponsor on the same route. Health and Care Worker applications cost £324 per person for up to three years, about ₦600,000, or £628 for more than three years, about ₦1.16m, and the fee is the same whether you apply from inside or outside the UK. You and your family do not pay the healthcare surcharge on this route. You must normally show £1,270, about ₦2.3m, held for 28 days in a row with day 28 falling within 31 days of applying, and you do not need to show it at all if you have been in the UK with a valid visa for at least 12 months, or if your employer certifies they will cover your costs for your first month.

Sources: gov.uk, Health and Care Worker visa costs and the Health and Care Worker visa overview.

Care worker codes carry one extra condition. Codes 6135 and 6136, care workers and senior care workers, are available when you extend, update or switch, which is what a new sponsor application is. If you are coming into a care job from a different visa, gov.uk adds that you must have been working legally in that job for that sponsor for at least 3 months.

A different work route entirely. Skilled Worker is the usual second door, and a decision on an application made inside the UK usually takes 8 weeks. Both routes share one closed door: you cannot switch if you are currently in the UK on a visit visa, a short-term student visa, a Parent of a Child Student visa, a seasonal worker visa, a domestic worker in a private household visa, on immigration bail, or on permission granted outside the immigration rules. And once you have applied, you must not travel outside the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man until you get the decision.

Sources: gov.uk, switch to a Health and Care Worker visa and switch to a Skilled Worker visa.

Study, if the timing works. Switching to a Student visa is possible from inside the UK, with the same list of visas you cannot switch from plus leave outside the rules. Your new course must start within 28 days of your current permission expiring, you must apply within 6 months of getting your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, and a decision usually takes 8 weeks.

Source: gov.uk, switch to a Student visa.

Read those decision times against your 60 days and the point lands by itself: the application has to go in inside the window, and it is the submitted application that protects you, not the decision. An 8-week decision on a file submitted on day 50 is fine. A perfect file submitted on day 61 is not a file.

Blessing's 60 days, with the arithmetic

Blessing is a senior care worker in Wakefield, 18 months into her visa. The second email arrives on a Tuesday and she does three things that evening: she writes the send date of the UKVI email at the top of a page and adds 60 to it; she emails international.recruitment@adassyh.org.uk with her four lines; and she downloads the register and searches the three care homes she knows are hiring.

Two of the three are on the register with a Worker licence. She sends them the expedited message that night. The third is not on the register at all, which she found out in ninety seconds instead of after a month of hoping.

By day 12 she has an offer. Her manager mentions that the home will need to "recover" the £611 licence fee, about ₦1.1m, from her first payslips. Blessing sends him the gov.uk line about licences being revoked for exactly that, and the deduction disappears from the conversation.

Her own bill, in full: £324 for the visa application, about ₦600,000, because her certificate covers three years. No healthcare surcharge on this route. No £1,270 to show, about ₦2.3m she does not have to find, because she has been in the UK with a valid visa for more than 12 months. Her application goes in on day 31 and the decision comes back inside the 8 weeks, after her original permission would have run out, which is fine, because the application went in inside the window.

The number worth carrying: about ₦600,000, not the millions an agent would price this at.

Who this playbook does not help

Say it plainly, because a false hope costs more than a hard truth.

If you were involved in the reasons the licence was lost, your permission is withdrawn immediately rather than curtailed, and this playbook's 60-day timetable is not yours. Get regulated advice today, not a WhatsApp opinion.

If you are outside the UK with a visa you have not travelled on, the gov.uk page says the visa is cancelled and a pending application will be refused. Your route is a fresh certificate of sponsorship from a different licensed employer, applied for from home. That is a job-hunting project measured in months, not a 60-day sprint, and the register above is still the right first tool.

If the 60 days have already run out, stop reading recovery pages and get regulated advice on your actual position today. Overstaying is a separate problem from unemployment, and it gets more expensive the longer it is left.

If no new sponsor comes through in time, the honest 12-month version is this: leave lawfully inside your window rather than overstay, keep every payslip, reference and training certificate you have, and rebuild from home with a UK-experienced CV that most applicants do not have. A lawful departure keeps the door open. An overstay closes it behind you.

What quietly goes wrong

• Waiting for the employer to sort it out. The clock is on your permission, not on their appeal.
• Counting the 60 days from the day you read the email instead of the day UKVI sent it.
• Not checking junk mail. The notices arrive by email, and the second one is the one that matters.
• Accepting a job from a company that is not on the register, or that is on it for a category that is not yours.
• Paying any part of an employer's licence or certificate costs. That request is a red flag about the employer, not a favour to you.
• Letting the window run out because you were waiting to feel ready. The submitted application is the thing that protects you.
• Paying anybody who promises to "fix" a curtailment. Nobody can undo it by phone call, and the ones who claim to are selling the same story to everybody in your WhatsApp group.

Free help that is actually free

Acas gives employees and employers free, impartial advice on workplace rights, rules and best practice, on 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Unpaid wages, notice, holiday pay owed to you: that is their ground, and it costs nothing.

Immigration advice must come from someone registered with the Immigration Advice Authority or a member of an approved professional body. gov.uk is blunt about the reason: you cannot get your money back if an adviser is not regulated. Check the register, and check whether they charge, before you hand anybody a file.

Source: gov.uk, Find an immigration adviser.

One thing to do now

Find the UKVI email, write its send date and that date plus 60 at the top of a page, then send the four-line email to your region. Tonight, before anything else.

Naira figures on this page were converted at the 18 August 2026 rate (£1 = ₦1,844).