Verification guide
Published 8 September 2026Last updated 8 September 2026Reading time 4 minutes
A Certificate of Sponsorship is not a document. It is a digital record inside the Home Office system, and what you receive is an 11-character reference number beginning with the letter C. If someone sent you a certificate as a PDF, an image or a printed page, it is not a Certificate of Sponsorship. No genuine one exists in that form.
This single fact defeats most sponsorship scams outright, because it is the one thing a scammer cannot work around. Forging a convincing-looking certificate is easy. Creating a record inside a Home Office system they have no access to is not possible.
When a licensed UK employer wants to sponsor you, they log into the Home Office Sponsorship Management System and assign you a Certificate of Sponsorship. Assigning it creates an electronic record containing your details, the job title, the salary, the occupation code and the dates.
What gets passed to you is the reference number for that record. You then quote it in your visa application, and the Home Office looks the record up directly. There is no certificate to send, print, sign or stamp, because there is no certificate.
A genuine CoS reference is 11 characters: the letter C followed by ten digits. It looks like C1234567890.
Extra letters, a different length, dashes, spaces or a prefix other than C all mean it is not a real reference. The correct format does not prove a reference is genuine, but the wrong format proves it is not.
The Home Office publishes the Register of Licensed Sponsors free on GOV.UK. Search for the employer's name. If they are not on it, they cannot assign anyone a Certificate of Sponsorship. Not "pending", not "in progress". This one check settles most cases.
Eleven characters, C plus ten digits. Anything else is not a reference number.
Find the employer's phone number on their own website or on the sponsor register. Never use a number an intermediary gives you. Ask HR to confirm the vacancy, the CoS and the person who contacted you. Only your sponsor can see the record in the Sponsorship Management System, so they are the only ones who can confirm it exists.
Job title, salary, start date, your name and passport number. Errors are common in fakes because the person producing them is working from guesswork.
Skilled Worker roles have minimum salary thresholds and occupation-specific going rates set by the Home Office. An offer well below the going rate could not be sponsored even if everything else were genuine.
Since 31 December 2024, Home Office sponsor guidance prohibits an employer from passing on the sponsor licence cost, the fee for assigning your Certificate of Sponsorship, or the Immigration Skills Charge. A sponsor that does so will normally have its licence revoked.
So any request for money in exchange for a CoS is doubly wrong. It is an attempt to charge you for something that cannot lawfully be charged to you, usually by someone who has no ability to assign one in the first place.
Your own visa application fee and the Immigration Health Surcharge are genuinely yours to pay, but you pay those to the Home Office directly, through official channels. Never to a recruiter, never in cash, never to a personal bank account.