6 Weeks to Act Before 32% Immigration Skills Charge Increase

6 Weeks to Act Before 32% Immigration Skills Charge Increase

In our last Home Office H1333 update, we covered the new guidance changes. Today, we have a far more urgent and costly update.

The clock is now well and truly ticking.

Sponsor licence holders have just 6 weeks before the Immigration Skills Charge (ISC) increases by a significant 32%.

This is not a minor adjustment. This is a material, upfront cost that will directly impact your 2026 sponsorship recruitment budgets. Action taken in the next few weeks could save your business thousands of pounds.

The Financial Impact: What's Changing on 16th December?

Effective Tuesday, 16 December 2025, the new ISC rates will be:

Sponsor Size	Current Fee (Annual)	New Fee (from 16 Dec)
Small Sponsor	£364	£480
Medium / Large Sponsor	£1,000	£1,320

This charge applies to the Skilled Worker and Senior or Specialist Worker routes. Remember, the ISC must be paid by you, the employer, and cannot legally be passed on to the worker.

For a medium or large sponsor hiring a Skilled Worker on a 5-year visa, this change represents a direct, upfront cost increase of £1,600 per worker (£320 x 5 years).

For SMEs and organisations where cash flow is critical, this is a significant blow, as the entire ISC must be paid upfront when you assign the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS).

Your Strategic Action Plan: How to Avoid the Fee Increase

To avoid the higher fee, the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) must be assigned before 16 December 2025.

We recommend all sponsors immediately take the following two steps:

01. Audit Your Hiring & Extension Pipeline
Review your records immediately. Identify all:

• New Hires who are due to be sponsored in December 2025, January 2026, and February 2026.
• Existing Sponsored Workers whose visas are due for extension in the first quarter of 2026.

02. Act to Assign CoS Before the Deadline
You can assign a CoS now for these employees to lock in the lower rate. A CoS is valid for 3 months after assignment, and a visa application can be submitted up to 3 months before the intended work start date. This gives you a generous window to act.

Don't Get Caught Out: The Operational Hurdles

Simply "deciding" to assign a CoS isn't enough. You must anticipate these common Home Office hurdles:

• For In-UK Applications (Extensions): You must have an Undefined CoS available in your Sponsor Management System (SMS) allocation. If you don't, a standard request can take up to 18 weeks (which is too late). You will need to use the £350 priority service to get a CoS allocation within 5 working days.
• For Out-of-UK Applications (New Hires): You must submit a Defined CoS (DCoS) request. While this normally takes 1-2 working days, the Home Office can request further information, which can delay the process by weeks. We strongly advise submitting DCoS requests as soon as possible, not in early December.
• The SMS Shutdown: The Home Office often closes the SMS from around 6 PM the day before a major change. Do not leave this until 15th December. You may be locked out.

Our Recommendation: Get Certainty

This deadline creates a high-stakes, time-sensitive administrative burden. For organisations planning to assign a large batch of CoS to beat the deadline, the risk of a single error or delay is high.

This is precisely the challenge our Sponsor Certainty Package was designed to solve. By engaging this service, an expert solicitor from our impartial panel will manage your entire CoS application batch. They will handle the DCoS requests, ensure all justifications are robust, and manage all Home Office correspondence, ensuring your CoS are assigned correctly and before the 16th December deadline.

This allows you to lock in the lower ISC rate with complete certainty, saving you both money and the significant administrative headache.