Can a Skilled Worker work at a client site? The sponsor control test

Appendix Skilled Worker requires the decision maker to withhold sponsorship points where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the job amounts to hiring the applicant to a third party to fill a position with that party, whether temporarily or permanently. The same provision excludes contract work undertaken to provide an ongoing routine role or service for a third party.

The route specific guidance applies the same distinction at sponsor level. A business cannot obtain or use a Skilled Worker licence to supply routine labour to its customers. If the Home Office concludes that the arrangement falls on the prohibited side of the line, the worker application can be refused and the sponsor can face compliance action.

A genuine commercial agreement is relevant evidence, but it does not determine the immigration classification. The Home Office is entitled to examine how the arrangement operates in practice.

Part 2 of the sponsor guidance gives the example of an IT company contracted to deliver a solution within an agreed period. Its sponsored employee may work at the client's premises for the length of the contract where the sponsoring company remains responsible for the worker and the project outputs.

That example establishes a useful boundary. Physical presence at a customer site does not transfer sponsorship. Equally, employment and payroll remaining with the sponsor do not save an arrangement where the client has in substance acquired an individual to perform its own routine role.

The correct analysis follows the operating model: the promised result, the allocation of responsibility, the worker's reporting line, how tasks are assigned, who assesses performance and what happens when the defined work is complete.

Current guidance describes a service or project within a certain period, with a specific end date after which the project will have been completed or the service will no longer be operated. The contract should therefore identify what the sponsor is responsible for delivering and when that obligation ends.

Duration alone is not decisive. A long technical implementation can remain a defined project; a succession of short purchase orders can still conceal an ongoing routine service. Renewal language, rolling statements of work and open ended resource commitments require particular care because the legal test looks beyond the paper term.

The worker should be attached to the sponsor's delivery obligation, not to a vacancy or headcount need inside the client. Substitution rights, project governance, milestones, acceptance criteria and responsibility for remediation may help establish that distinction where they reflect the real arrangement.

A defensible record begins with the client contract and relevant statement of work, but it should not end there. The sponsor should align the service description, project period, work location, worker's job description, organisation chart, reporting line and Certificate of Sponsorship. Internal project records should show how the sponsor directs and reviews delivery.

The Home Office may ask the client to confirm that the worker operates independently from it, remains under the sponsor's control and has not been supplied to perform a routine role. The client's account should not be treated as a formality. If the client describes an embedded resource managed by its own team, carefully drafted sponsor documents will carry limited weight.

Evidence should be retained contemporaneously. Reconstructing project control after a compliance visit has begun is materially weaker than maintaining the contract, governance record, work allocation and escalation trail while the arrangement is live.

Part 3 requires a sponsor to report a change to a sponsored worker's normal work location, including a move to a client site not previously recorded on the Certificate of Sponsorship. Unless another period is stated, the change should be reported within 10 working days of the relevant event.

Day to day or occasional location changes do not require repeated reports, but changes to the regular working pattern do. The sponsor should identify the worker's normal locations before the assignment begins and decide whether the Certificate of Sponsorship already records the client site accurately.

Reporting the location does not approve the underlying arrangement. The sponsor must separately satisfy the client contract rule, retain responsibility for the role and maintain suitable attendance and working pattern records.

A historic contract may have begun as a defined implementation and drifted into business as usual support. Workers may remain after the original deliverable, reporting lines may move to the client and repeated extensions may replace the initial project end point. Sponsor risk follows the arrangement as it now operates.

The review should be completed worker by worker and contract by contract. Identify the client need, sponsor deliverable, project period, work location, management structure and evidence of control. Compare what the sponsor reported with what the worker and client would each say happens in practice.

Where the arrangement is not defensible, the first task is legal classification. Moving the worker, amending the contract or reporting a location cannot be assumed to cure a period in which the sponsor may have supplied labour contrary to the Rules.

SW 5.6 forms part of the mandatory sponsorship points requirement. A proposed arrangement that fails the test can lead to refusal of the Skilled Worker application. Sponsor guidance also states that the Home Office will revoke the licence where it finds that sponsored workers are being supplied as labour for routine roles or the sponsor lacks full responsibility for their work.

For an existing sponsor, the exposure may extend beyond one assignment. A compliance review can examine whether the business model depends upon labour supply, whether Certificates of Sponsorship described the roles accurately and whether client sites and material changes were reported.

The proportionate response is a controlled review of the contract, work and evidence before a new Certificate is assigned, a worker is moved or an existing concern is explained. Commercial urgency should not be allowed to fix the immigration character of the arrangement by default.