r/SkilledWorkerVisaUK

Hi,

I will be applying for ILR in Dec. How long does it take to prepare for the Life in UK test? Ideally when should i start reading for it and when should I take the exam?

My company liscense is no more. anyone can tell what happen next? i checked my visa status it is fine. what happens next? do you get curtailment letter? what to do next? meanwhile i am looking for another job.

Cheers

I posted earlier today that the UK vs Great Britain / Northern Ireland distinction might be one of the hardest Life in the UK test questions.

People hated that take.

Fair enough: “hardest” was too strong.

So I’m curious, what Life in the UK test question actually felt hardest, strangest, or most ridiculous?

A few people mentioned:

- Northern Ireland Assembly member count

- Olympics / Paralympics facts

- random culture questions

- wording differences between mock tests and the real test

What else catches people?

I don’t think the hardest Life in the UK test question is a history date, a monarch, or even one of the Parliament questions.

It’s this:

>Which place is part of the UK, but not part of Great Britain?

The answer, of course, is Northern Ireland.

The terms are confusing because they overlap and are often used interchangeably:

• United Kingdom / UK = England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• Great Britain = England, Scotland and Wales
• England = one country inside the UK

The other trap is Ireland vs Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Ireland, meaning the Republic of Ireland, is not.

Great Britain does not include Northern Ireland. The UK does.

I am 33yrs and I’ve been finding it difficult to get pregnant. Is there any help because I am desperately looking for a baby. Any help or advice will be appreciated.

Hi all, looking for reassurance or advice on my situation.

Background

•	On Skilled Worker visa, same employer throughout

•	My role is formally classified as home-based in my employer’s system

•	Employer (large multinational) has reported this to UKVI via SMS as required under C1.24

•	I recently relocated to London for personal reasons and formally requested my employer to update my place of work accordingly. My employer agreed and issued a formal letter confirming London (home address) as my official place of work, noting that I would cover any travel costs to the Manchester office when required

•	I do occasionally travel to the Manchester office when required

My concern:

C1.24 states that UKVI reserves the right to ask why UK sponsorship is necessary if the worker could work remotely from their home country. My employer has already reported the home-based status and there has been no response or issue raised by Home Office.

When I apply for ILR, could this home-based arrangement be used against me?

Specifically:

•	Could Home Office question whether UK sponsorship was genuinely necessary?

•	Does office attendance frequency get scrutinised during ILR assessment?

•	Has anyone in a similar home-based Skilled Worker role successfully obtained ILR?

Note: I work in construction management, a UK-based industry, so the role is genuinely tied to the UK market even if day-to-day work is remote.

Thanks in advance.

Please advise or share experience on when visa outcome was delayed. I have waited for 9 weeks, it’s over the 8 weeks processing time and there has been no response from Home office.

Hi all,

My employer is issuing me COS for SOC 3534 and I am ACCA part-qualified, so using the New Entrant discount for professional training for ACCA, as it is UK-recognised professional program. I am not sure what documents shall be required along with ACCA transcripts to prove the job shall be professional training for me. Some details about my profile-

I am currently on Youth Mobility Visa and working for my current employer on Zero-hour contract from last 1 year and 9 months. My visa is expiring on 14th July 2026 and my boss has applied COS in priority and it has been accepted for priority. For YMS visa, I didnt need any English proof earlier, but RQF Level 6, so I am eligible for the SOC code applied and done IELTS UKVI GTE in April this year, got the score.

Could someone please suggest what documents and process shall be required for the visa application, if I can do it myself or involve a legal professional. It's gonna cost me £800-1000 roughly and I am on a little cash-crunch for the payment of IHS and visa fee already. But anyway visa is priority.

After a long period of hardship, I finally got a job that pays around £44k. However, they didn’t ask me anything about needing visa sponsorship after eight months. They only asked whether I need a visa now, and I said no.

To be careful, I emailed HR during vetting to let them know that my visa will expire in eight months. They didn’t raise any issue. Since it is a financial company, the vetting process was rigorous, and it has now been a month since I started. However, I’m still worried about whether they will sponsor me or not.
Any thoughts!
I work in the tech team at a large financial company(Job title - Senior Associate )

20yo, never had the chance to go to college/uni. All I have is a one year experience working as a frontline agent for a bank and a high school diploma.

This is a genuine question, I understand that the only way to find out is through trying. though, testing the water and seeing other people's views on my odds would give a more realistic view and help more with navigating decisions and how much energy is best to be put into such task (that is applying for jobs).

Yes, I am expecting there to be weeks to put work into and a bunch of trials,
Just to how much extent, if there is any.

Any response would be much appreciated help,
hope you all have a nice rest of day!

Are there any legit not so expensive lawyers or immigration officer who can help in cos? Or tell real advice to extend visa till cos comes. If there are free good support lawyers that would help too.

Very urgent as visa expires on 6th june.

Hello! I am interested in studying through the graduate visa and would like to table that into a skilled worker visa. I know it it a highly competitive market and would like some advice on the best Master’s programs that would allow me to earn a fighting chance at securing skilled worker sponsorship. I currently have a BS in Criminal Justice and Homeland Security studies along with 7 years of military service. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone! This sub has been so helpful to me and I was hoping someone might be able to help me again.

My employer has applied for an additional CoS allocation in oreder to sponsor me on a SWV. They sent in the application and we received the priority service as well. UKVI then requested additional documents which we sent over within the timeframe they had specified and we received an automated response acknowledging the receipt of those additional documents. We have now received an email saying that the Home Office cannot grant the CoS allocation as they never recieved our response? This is very confusing as we have the automated email acknowledging that they did received the documents. The email we had sent was within the file size limit and wasnt password protected either.

I am so stressed out about this and dont know how to proceed. We called them immediately and they asked us to respond to their latest email with a screenshot of the automated acknowledgement. Has anyone here been in this situation? How did you go about it? I would really appreciate any help please! Thank you so so much.

My visa expires on the 5th of June and I might submit the SWV application without CoS to avoid overstaying but this is all so stressful!

I normally don’t post stuff like this, but after going through the UK sponsorship job hunt myself, I realised how mentally exhausting the whole process can be for international students and PSW holders.

You spend hours on LinkedIn, Indeed, Reed and other sites applying, only to later realise:

- the company doesn’t sponsor

- the role isn’t suitable

- the job is already expired

- or it’s impossible to know whether they actually hire international candidates

After finally securing sponsorship myself, me and a few friends started building something small called GradSponsor 🇬🇧

The idea is simple:

We try to collect sponsorship related jobs from different sources into one place and organise them specifically for international students and graduates.

Right now it’s still early stage and honestly far from perfect. Some jobs are manually reviewed, some are based on sponsor signals and public sponsor licence/company data. We’re still improving the filtering, quality and volume every day.

Current price is intentionally very low, literally less than a coffee monthly, because we wanted to make it affordable for students.

I’m not here to hard sell anything honestly. I genuinely want feedback from people who are actually going through this process.

What would YOU want from a platform like this?

- More jobs?

- Better filtering?

- Email/WhatsApp alerts?

- AI matching?

- CV feedback?

- Sponsor probability scoring?

Even criticism is welcome because we’re still building and improving it daily.

If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to comment or DM me and I’ll send the link 🙌

Hi there,

I recently received a job offer with a start date in four months. However, my current notice period is 3 months. (I don’t think I can negotiate, so I’ll have to work the full three months.)

My new employer seems quite willing to assist me with a super-priority application.

My understanding is I should apply for super priority the day I resign but seems bit tricky because if I resign lets say 1st of June my last day will be 1st of September and new job’s start date will be 2nd of September. (But then should I apply for a new visa on 2nd of June to make it exactly 3 months before the new Job? )

What’s the safest way to avoid resetting my ILR clock and ensure a smooth transition to my new job?

Hi, I wanted to ask for some clarification regarding ILR applications and employer attendance records.

Currently, I am working in a hybrid role, and I will become eligible for ILR in September. Recently, my organisation introduced a policy that hybrid employees are expected to attend the office three times per week. The issue is that my office is in London, while I am currently living in Sheffield, so travelling that distance three times a week is quite difficult.

At the moment, I am travelling to the office around two times per month. From July onwards, I am planning to increase my office attendance to around three times per month where possible. Additionally, when my contract is renewed in September, I am considering formally switching to a fully remote arrangement, subject to company approval.

When I discussed this with HR, they mentioned there is a possibility that during compliance audits or ILR-related checks, the Home Office or auditors may ask about office attendance records. HR recommended that I attend the office as much as possible before my ILR application.

I wanted to understand whether, during an ILR application, the Home Office actually verifies detailed office attendance records over the full 5-year period, such as:
- How many times an employee physically attended the office
- Office punch-in/punch-out timings
- Internal attendance logs

I understand they do check immigration records, absences from the UK, salary, sponsorship compliance, and employment details, but I am unsure whether they also deeply audit hybrid working attendance patterns.

Has anyone experienced this or knows how detailed these checks usually are?

Any wagers on where the net migration numbers will be tomorrow? I reckon between 100K and -50K.

My family immigrated to the UK on a skilled worker visa (my mom is the main applicant) when i was 16 years old in September 2018. She has since become a British citizen and this will be my fist time attempting to renew my visa since that happy development. I am now 24 years old. I have spent most of the time since we immigrated to the UK in my home country for school and then university and I would spend 3 months in the UK every year for summer holidays. My skilled worker dependent visa expires on Feb 2027. I have consulted several immigration solicitors and 2 of them actually encouraged me to apply for ILR (with their help) even knowing I don't fulfill the continuous residence rule, saying that travel for education is exempt. I consulted them for visa renewal and I was surprised with this information. Naturally, I would love to have ILR. Has anyone had a similar experience and received ILR? I'm asking as not only would the ILR application cost me the usual 3000 pounds, law fees will also be around that, and if it's improbable I get it, I'd rather not spend that money and let it go to waste. I'm really anxious to attempt this without knowing that it has been successful in the past. Thnx