The Skilled Worker visa is suitable for those who are outside the UK or in some cases who are already in the UK and hold a visa of some kind. In some cases, an international company which has a commercial entity in the UK may wish to transfer a skilled member of staff from an entity outside the UK to the British entity. This type of visa used to be referred to, for obvious reasons, as an “intra-company transfer” visa. 

In such a case the appropriate visa route is the Senior or Specialist Worker Visa route, or in some cases the Graduate Trainee Visa route. The latter, as the name suggests, is for migrants who are employed at the overseas entity and are on a graduate trainee programme.

In some ways these schemes are like the Skilled Worker scheme: they require sponsorship, a sponsor licence and a CoS, main applicants may bring their dependants with them to the UK and there are rules about minimum salaries. 

There are, though, significant differences – most particularly that these are not routes to settlement. In some circumstances it may be possible to combine leave held under these categories with leave held in other categories but unlike the Skilled Worker route they do not provide a route to settlement by themselves. Leave can be granted for different periods but not more than either five years or nine years, depending on the applicant’s circumstances.

Unlike the Skilled Worker route, there are no English language requirements.