On 11 April 2022, the UK government introduced five new immigration routes under the Global Business Mobility (GBM) route that allow overseas businesses to send workers to the UK for temporary assignments.

One of these routes is the UK Expansion Worker visa, which replaced the Sole Representative route. This visa allows an employee of an overseas business to come to the UK to set up a branch of the business that has not started trading in the UK.

Eligibility

There are new eligibility requirements that need to be met to apply for UK ExpansionWorker visa, namely:

• Have a valid certificate of sponsorship from your employer
• The job must be on the list of eligible occupations
• Have already worked for an employer outside the UK for at least 12 months, unless they earn over £73,900 annually, or are a Japanese national doing work for a Japanese company that is expanding to the UK.
• Income of at least £42,400 per year or the ‘going rate’ for the occupation – whichever is higher.

However, UK Expansion Workers do not need to prove that they can speak English to an acceptable standard to apply.

Sponsorship

Unlike the Sole Representative route, the UK Expansion Worker route is now a sponsored one, and applicants must have a valid Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) from their employer. The sponsoring entity must be a UK branch or wholly-owned subsidiary of an established overseas business.

An advantage of the new route is that the maximum number of UK Expansion Workers that a company can sponsor at any one time is five, unlike the previous route only allows one senior employee.

Length of Stay and Settlement

The Sole Representative could stay in the UK for an initial period of 3 years and can extend for a further 2 years, which makes it possible to apply for settlement. Whereas with the Expansion Worker route, the length of stay granted is up to two years, with the initial period of stay being one year. It is classified as a temporary work route and it does not lead to settlement. However, there are other routes that could lead to settlement such as applying for a Skilled Worker sponsor license.