This category is for people seeking to set up or run a business in the UK with access to an investment of £50,000 per applicant. Applicants will need to have an innovative, viable and scalable business idea that is supported by an endorsing body. A successful innovator visa applicant is granted permission to live in the UK in this category for 3 years. Before this expires, you can continue to extend your visa for another 3 years or may be able to apply for settlement.
You can apply as an Innovator team. Whilst each team member/applicant does not need to be the sole founder of the business, each team member/applicant will need to have a separate £50,000 available to invest and receive their own individual endorsement from an approved endorsement body.
Once granted, applicants must spend majority of their time in the UK to develop their business and are allowed not to work for businesses which they have not established, joined or taken over.
Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) as an Innovator: General Requirements
In order to qualify for ILR as an Innovator, you will need to satisfy UK Visas & Immigration that:
- Your last grant of leave was in the Innovator category;
- You have sufficient knowledge of the English language and sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom under Appendix KoLL;
- You are not in the UK in breach of immigration laws;
- You do not fall for refusal under the general grounds for refusal;
- You meet the continuous residence requirement.
Continuous residence
In order to qualify for indefinite leave to remain as an Innovator, you will need to spend 3 years in the Innovator category. Time spent in the Start-up category will not be counted towards this 3-year requirement. Absences from the UK will not break the continuous period provided they total 180 days or less during any consecutive 12 months.
ILR as an Innovator: Endorsement
For the Innovator category, endorsement by an endorsing body is required both at the initial application stage and again when applying for settlement. By the next endorsement, you will need to demonstrate enough progress in your business to meet the settlement criteria. For guidance on endorsing bodies please refer to Gov.UK
In order to qualify for indefinite leave to remain as an Innovator, you will need to meet all of the following conditions to show progress:
- You must show significant achievements (see below), judged against the business plan assessed in your previous endorsement;
- Your business must be registered with Companies House and you must be listed as a director or member of that business;
- Your business must be active and trading;
- Your business must appear to be sustainable for at least the following 12 months, based on its assets and expected income, weighed against its current and planned expenses;
- You must demonstrate an active key role in the day-to-day management and development of the business.
To demonstrate your achievements, you will need to meet at least 2 of the following criteria:
- At least £50,000 has been invested into the business and actively spent furthering the business plan assessed in your previous endorsement;
- The business has created the equivalent of at least 10 full-time jobs for resident workers;
- The business has created the equivalent of at least 5 full-time jobs for resident workers, which have an average salary of at least £25,000 a year (gross pay, excluding any expenses);
- The number of the business’s customers has at least doubled within the most recent 3 years and is currently higher than the mean number of customers for other UK businesses offering comparable main products or services;
- The business has engaged in significant research and development activity and has applied for intellectual property protection in the UK;
- The business has generated a minimum annual gross revenue of £1 million in the last full year covered by its accounts;
- The business is generating a minimum annual gross revenue of £500,000 in the last full year covered by its accounts, with at least £100,000 from exporting overseas.
Settlement as an Innovator: Job creation
As with the previous entrepreneur rules, if you rely on job creation for a settlement then there are additional specifications for the jobs created. However, unlike the entrepreneur rules, creating jobs is not mandatory if at least two other criteria can be met.
- Each of the jobs must have existed for at least 12 months and comply with all relevant UK legislation, including (but not limited to) the National Minimum Wage Regulations in effect at the time and the Working Time Regulations 1998;
- Each of the jobs must involve an average of at least 30 hours of paid work per week. 2 or more-part time jobs that add up to 30 hours per week may be combined to represent the equivalent of a single full-time job, as long as each of the jobs has existed for at least 12 months. However, a single full-time job of more than 30 hours of work per week does not count as more than 1 full- time job.
By ‘jobs’, the guidance refers to posts filled, rather than a number of employees. If a single job has been filled for over 12 months by different employees at different times, this counts as the job has existed for at least 12 months.
If you founded your business as part of an Innovator team and you are both applying for endorsement for settlement, then you cannot share the same means for meeting the criteria above. For example, if 2 applicants are both relying on the requirement to have created 10 jobs, 20 jobs must have been created in total.
If your application for endorsement is successful, you will need to submit your letter of endorsement with your application to the Home Office.
Contact our Innovator Settlement Immigration Team
For expert advice and assistance with an application for settlement as an Innovator, contact our business immigration advisers in London on 0203 909 8399 or contact us online.
Disclaimer:
The information in this blog is for general information purposes only and does not purport to be comprehensive or to provide legal advice. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the information and law is current as of the date of publication it should be stressed that, due to the passage of time, this does not necessarily reflect the present legal position. Connaught Law and authors accept no responsibility for loss which may arise from accessing or reliance on information contained in this blog. For formal advice on the current law please don’t hesitate to contact Connaught Law. Legal advice is only provided pursuant to a written agreement, identified as such, and signed by the client and by or on behalf of Connaught Law.
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