Scale-up

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STOP PRESS: This Practice Note is being updated for changes in the Immigration Rules further to Statement of Changes HC 997. For further details, see News Analysis: Statement of changes in Immigration Rules, HC 997—analysis

The Scale-up route permits UK businesses which have experienced recent high growth to obtain a Home Office sponsor licence to recruit highly skilled non-British or Irish citizens who ‘have the skills needed to enable the Scale-up business to continue growing’. It is an (initially) sponsored and nominally points-based route, and was introduced in the Immigration Rules, Appendix Scale-up on 22 August 2022.

The key eligibility criteria for an organisation applying for a Scale-up sponsor licence are that it must:

  1. •

    have an annualised growth of at least 20% for the previous three-year period based on either employment (staff count) or turnover, and

  2. •

    have had a minimum of ten employees at the start of the relevant three-year period

After a low take-up, on 13 April 2023, the Home Office launched an ‘Endorsing Body Pathway’ for organisations who do not meet the above eligibility criteria, because they have been established in

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