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A care home's own sponsor licence status is publicly checkable on the Home Office's register of licensed sponsors — worth confirming your own listing is current, and worth checking before partnering with or acquiring another provider that sponsors staff.
Why check your own listing
The register shows your licence rating (A or B) publicly. A downgrade to a B rating, if not corrected within the improvement period, risks becoming a suspension — checking your own status regularly catches drift before it becomes a crisis.
How to actually search the register
The published register is searchable by organisation name and by town or county, but results are sorted alphabetically rather than ranked by relevance — for a provider with a common name, or one that trades under a name different from its registered company name, that matters. Search using the exact legal entity name shown on your licence documentation rather than the name over the door, and if you run several branches under one licence, confirm the listing reflects the entity you expect rather than a legacy name left over from a previous restructuring.
- Search by the registered legal entity name first, not the trading or brand name.
- Confirm the sponsor type and rating shown match what you hold internally — a mismatch is worth raising with the Home Office directly rather than assuming it's a display lag.
- If checking another provider ahead of a transaction, note the date you checked — the register updates periodically rather than in real time, so a timestamped record is worth more than memory later.
Due diligence on other providers
If you're acquiring a care business or taking on transferred sponsored staff, confirm the current sponsor's licence is active and in good standing before the transfer — a lapsed licence on the other side complicates any TUPE-related sponsorship transfer.
What ownership changes and restructuring can trigger
A sponsor licence attaches to a specific legal entity, not to the care business as most people think of it day to day. That distinction matters in a sale, merger or restructuring: an asset purchase, a change of company registration number, or moving sponsored staff to a new holding structure can mean the new entity needs its own licence rather than inheriting the seller's — it doesn't transfer automatically just because the service, staff and building all stay the same. Anyone exploring an acquisition should treat 'does the target's licence transfer to us' as a question for their immigration adviser early in due diligence, not a detail to resolve after signing.
Checking beyond the sponsor register alone
The sponsor register tells you whether a licence exists and its rating, but it isn't the only public record worth pulling before a transaction. The Home Office also publishes a separate list of employers who've received a civil penalty for illegal working, and a provider you're acquiring or partnering with could appear there even while holding a clean sponsor licence, since the two enforcement tracks don't always move together. Treating the sponsor register as one input among a small set of checks — alongside CQC's own inspection history and that illegal working penalties list — gives a fuller picture than any single register on its own.
What a rating actually signals
An A-rating reflects consistent compliance; a B-rating means the Home Office has identified issues requiring an improvement plan. Neither rating alone tells you about day-to-day care quality — that's CQC's territory, not the Home Office's.
Monitoring status without checking manually every week
Most providers who get caught out by a rating change find out from a member of staff or a candidate who happened to check the register themselves, not from an internal alert. Given how much rides on catching a B-rating early enough to correct it within the improvement period, treating this as a scheduled check — or better, an automated one via alerts built into a compliance platform — is a small investment against a genuinely serious downside. The same logic applies to monitoring a partner or acquisition target's status over time, rather than checking once at the start of a deal and assuming nothing changes before completion.
FAQ
Is the sponsor register the same as the CQC register?
No — they're separate registers run by separate bodies. Checking one doesn't tell you about standing on the other.
How often does the sponsor register update?
It's updated regularly but isn't necessarily real-time — for a transaction of any significance, confirm status directly with the Home Office rather than relying solely on the public list.
Our care home trades under a different name from our registered sponsor licence — is that a problem?
Not inherently, but it's worth confirming the register lists your correct legal entity and that anyone checking your status externally — a candidate, a local authority commissioner, a prospective partner — knows to search under that name rather than your trading brand.
What does it mean if a provider no longer appears on the register at all, rather than showing a suspended status?
A licence can come off the register for reasons that aren't compliance failures — a voluntary surrender, a business closure, or a restructuring into a new legal entity that hasn't yet applied for its own licence — as well as for revocation. Absence from the register on its own doesn't tell you which of those applies, so a direct enquiry is worth more than an assumption either way.
Related: Sponsor licence compliance for care providers
GOV.UK references: Register of licensed sponsors
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