United Kingdom | Immigration and nationality fee increases

The Home Office is increasing certain immigration and nationality fees, effective April 9.

Key Points:

• U.K. Visas and Immigration’s policy paper outlines key immigration application fee increases, including for applications for skilled worker and visit visas and Certificates of Sponsorship.
• Effective April 9, the following fee structure will be in place:

Additional Information: In addition, for skilled worker applications, worker sponsor license fees for medium or large sponsors will increase from £1,476 to £1,579. For visit visas, short visits up to six months will be £127, long visits up to two years will be £475, long visits up to five years will be £848 and long visits up to 10 years will be £1,059. Optional premium services (both inside and outside the U.K.) will largely remain unchanged. Businesses sponsoring employees and education institutions sponsoring students should be aware of the fee increases and take them into account in their 2025 budgets.

As BAL reported, the fee increases come after Parliament recently proposed changes to raise immigration and nationality products and service fees to generate additional revenue as part of the government’s Plan for Change and reduce reliance of the migration and borders system on taxpayer funding. Increases to the upfront immigration health surcharge were introduced last year and coincide with the Home Office removing the requirement to renew sponsor licenses for organizations automatically extending all licenses due to expire on or after April 6 for an additional 10 years. Sponsor licenses due to expire before April 6 must still apply for renewal and pay the non-recoupable fee before the expiration date.

The Home Office recently issued a statement of changes in Immigration Rules and are expected to release an Immigration White Paper soon to set out the government’s future border and immigration system core objectives. BAL will continue to monitor developments and will provide more information as it becomes available.

This alert has been provided by the BAL Global Practice Group.

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