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Now that you have been offered a role with your desired trust and have worked your way through the pre-employment check support list, it is now time for the trust to apply for your certificate of sponsorship so that you can apply for your Health & Care Worker visa.

What is a CoS?

A Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) is an electronic document issued by a trust which is then approved by the UK’s Home Office.

Once approval has been provided it enables doctors to apply for their visa and confirms that the Trust can employ them, whilst sponsoring their visa so that they can work in the UK.

The document contains information about all aspects of the job the doctor is going to do, such as pay, responsibilities, location etc. However, one of the most important parts of the CoS which the doctor will use to apply for their visa is the electronic reference number at the top of the first page.

Obtaining sponsorship license

In order to obtain your certificate, you must provide the following items:

• Passport – to prove nationality and identity

• Proof of address

• Police clearances - coverage of 10 years for any country you’ve lived in for more than 12 months. (This does not have to be 12 consecutive months, it just needs to be a year spent overall in a country. For example, if you were to have spent 6 months in a country in 2019, then went back in 2021 for 8 months.)

• A copy of your GMC registration

• Your tuberculosis test results if you are from a country listed here

• If the hospital did not tick the maintenance box, you must prove that you have enough personal savings to support yourself in the UK. More information on costs and fees can be found here

In order to create the certificate, the HR department of the trust will raise an application for the CoS according to your specific job details such as, salary range, actual grade of position and GMC registration.

They will then ensure that the information you have provided along with proof of address and passport can be matched together and is correct. After confirming this important part of the process, the trust proves that you are the designated person to fill their role and to be assigned the Health & Care Worker visa.

How long will it take?

The process depends on how busy the HR department are at the trust, as well as how long it takes for you to collate all the documentation required.

They have access to an online SMS portal (sponsorship management system), where they input the details provided as soon as they possibly can.

Once they have been input, the system populates a 2-page PDF document and it is sent directly to you.

As the trust will usually have a group of applications to process at one time, there may be slight delays to the process, as the HR department will need to check through the legitimacy of the documents provided, as well as getting a sign-off for the fee required to be paid to the Home Office per CoS.

However, all in all the process should be no longer than 2-3 weeks and you should then receive your certificate.

There are a few things we recommend you look out for and try to remember whilst applying for your sponsorship. This includes:

• Ensure that all of the information you provide is correct and matches all of the details in the documents you have given to the trust, as this will save time and stress on both sides.

• If there have been any mistakes found by the trust they will make a note of this on their sponsor notes, which will state the correct information that should have been there originally.

How long is the certificate valid for?

One other point to note is that once you have been assigned your certificate, you must apply for your visa within 3 months from the date received.

The government also advise that you must not apply for your visa more than 3 months before the start date of the job listed on the certificate.

Click here for more information on this.

You are now even closer to working in your dream job, however, will now need to apply for your Health and Care Visa to enable you to work here in the UK.

We will be releasing a guide on this in the near-future so keep your eye out.