Quick answer: A recruitment or staffing agency generally cannot sponsor a chef’s Skilled Worker visa. Home Office sponsor rules require the sponsor to be the worker’s genuine, day-to-day employer, not an intermediary that places the same person into different clients’ kitchens; guidance explicitly blocks using sponsorship to supply “routine labour” to a third party. Separately, chefs (occupation code 5434) stopped being eligible for new Skilled Worker sponsorship on 22 July 2025, when the standard route moved to graduate-level roles only. Anyone already sponsored as a chef before that date can normally continue and extend. Nothing here is immigration advice for your specific case; for that, use a solicitor or an OISC-registered adviser.
The question we get asked from both sides
A chef in Manila messages us on WhatsApp: an agency in the UK has told him it can “sort his visa” if he registers. A catering manager at a school kitchen in Warrington emails asking whether we can sponsor a Skilled Worker visa for a Filipino chef she’d like to keep past his current contract. Both are asking a version of the same question, and both are working from the same wrong assumption: that placing a chef with an agency and sponsoring that chef’s visa are the same kind of relationship.
They aren’t. One is a staffing arrangement. The other is an immigration status tied to a specific, accountable employer. Search “chef sponsorship jobs UK” today and the results are entirely job-board listing pages, Indeed, Glassdoor, Job Today, Caterer.com, aggregating adverts that use the phrase “visa sponsorship available” without saying what that actually means in September 2026. None of them explain that the underlying rule changed in July 2025, or that an agency advertising sponsorship faces a legal restriction most job seekers have never heard of. This is that explanation.
What changed on 22 July 2025
Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC 997, which came into force on 22 July 2025, raised the standard skill threshold for new Skilled Worker sponsorship from RQF Level 3 to RQF Level 6, degree level. Chefs sit at RQF Level 3 under occupation code 5434, so the standard chef role dropped out of new-application eligibility on that date, along with roughly 100 other medium-skilled occupations across several sectors. The general minimum salary for a Skilled Worker visa moved to £41,700 a year at the same time, or the going rate for the occupation if higher.
Two safety nets exist for roles below RQF6: the Immigration Salary List and the Temporary Shortage List, both of which let specific occupations keep sponsoring below degree level. Chef is on neither, as of this month. The Migration Advisory Committee reviewed the Temporary Shortage List’s food and beverage gap in 2026 and did not recommend adding chefs, catering managers or bar managers. The Temporary Shortage List itself is time-limited to the end of 2026 regardless, and workers sponsored on it cannot bring dependants.
None of this is retrospective. If a chef’s first Certificate of Sponsorship for the chef occupation was issued before 22 July 2025, the transitional protection in the same Statement of Changes lets that sponsorship continue and, in most cases, be extended in the same role with the same or a new sponsor. The change only closes the door on brand new chef sponsorships from that date forward.
| Situation | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| First CoS as a chef issued before 22 July 2025 | Can normally continue and be extended under the transitional rules |
| New chef Skilled Worker application from 22 July 2025 | Not eligible under the standard route; RQF Level 3 sits below the new RQF6 threshold |
| Chef added to the Immigration Salary List or Temporary Shortage List | Has not happened. The 2026 shortage-list review looked at hospitality and did not add it |
| Switching into the chef occupation from another visa category now | Same RQF6 rule applies to new grants; a fresh chef CoS would not normally qualify |
Can a recruitment agency sponsor a chef at all?
Set the July 2025 change aside for a moment, because even a chef role that did qualify would run into a second, older problem: what an agency is allowed to do with a sponsor licence.
Home Office guidance for sponsors is specific about this. A sponsor has to be the worker’s genuine employer, with real, ongoing responsibility for what that person does, who supervises them, and how their work is managed day to day. Using a licence to place a sponsored worker with a series of third-party clients as general cover, rather than employing them directly for your own business, is treated as supplying “routine labour” to someone else, and it is not a permitted use of sponsorship. A licence holder found doing this risks having it suspended or revoked, and that puts every worker it sponsors at risk, the whole workforce, over one non-compliant case.
That single rule is the reason the “can an agency sponsor me” question has a mostly flat answer, independent of which trade the agency works in. A business that exists to introduce chefs to hotels, care homes and contract caterers on a shift-by-shift or contract basis is, by definition, doing the thing the guidance is written to stop a sponsor from doing.
| Who’s asking | Can they sponsor? |
|---|---|
| A direct employer with its own sponsor licence, running its own kitchen | Yes, if the role and salary meet the current rules |
| A staffing agency placing the same chef into different client kitchens | No. This is the “routine labour” arrangement the guidance blocks |
| An umbrella company processing pay for an agency worker | No. It isn’t the genuine employer directing the work |
| A hirer that found the candidate through an agency but employs them directly | Yes, if the hirer holds its own licence. The agency’s introduction doesn’t change that |
Does ChefsBay sponsor chef visas?
No, and we’d rather say that plainly than let anyone assume otherwise. We’re a temporary staffing agency: chefs on our books pick up shifts and assignments across different client kitchens in Manchester, Liverpool, London, the Midlands and beyond, which is exactly the arrangement the paragraph above describes. Every chef we place already has to have their own right to work in the UK before we book them onto a shift, checked the same way for every worker regardless of nationality. We don’t hold a sponsor licence for this business model, and given the rules above, it wouldn’t fit one if we did.
If you’re a chef looking specifically for an employer who can sponsor a Skilled Worker visa, that has to be a direct employer, one kitchen, one contract, running its own licence, not a staffing agency. If you already have the right to work here through another route, registering with us works exactly the same way it does for any other chef: right-to-work document, CV, references, and a Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate if you can get one first.
If you’re already sponsored as a chef
Chefs who hold a Skilled Worker visa on a Certificate of Sponsorship issued before 22 July 2025 are in a materially different position from someone starting today. Extensions in the same role are generally still possible, and a change of employer is still possible provided the new employer holds its own sponsor licence and issues a new CoS under the transitional terms rather than a fresh standard application. What a new sponsor cannot do is treat an existing chef’s visa as a reason the usual eligibility rules don’t apply to them; the transitional protection travels with the worker’s history, not with any employer that happens to want to hire them.
This is precisely the kind of case-specific question where a general guide like this one stops being useful. Whether a particular move, extension or change of employer works depends on dates, CoS history and salary detail that only a solicitor or an OISC-registered immigration adviser can assess against your actual paperwork. The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner publishes a register of who’s authorised to give that advice; we’re not, and anyone offering to “sort” a visa outcome without asking to see your CoS history should be treated with real caution.
Routes that don’t depend on employer sponsorship
Sponsorship isn’t the only way a chef ends up with the right to work in a UK kitchen, and for a lot of the people who message us, it was never the relevant route in the first place. British and Irish citizens need no visa at all. Settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme carries full right to work, checked once with a share code rather than repeated on every new assignment. Someone here on a partner or family visa, or as a dependant of a Skilled Worker in an unrelated occupation, typically has the right to work attached to that visa already, independent of what job they take. The Youth Mobility Scheme lets nationals of a specific list of eligible countries work in the UK for a fixed period without needing an employer to sponsor them at all; gov.uk sets out who currently qualifies. A student visa allows work, but only up to 20 hours a week in term time for most kitchen roles, which is a genuine constraint against a full chef rota rather than a technicality to work around.
None of that is a substitute for checking your own situation properly. If you’re weighing up a route into UK kitchen work and sponsorship genuinely isn’t available to you, an OISC-registered adviser or immigration solicitor can tell you, specifically, what is. What we can tell you, generally, is what the right to work checks look like once you have status: our guide to right to work checks for kitchen staff covers the three valid check routes and what happens if a visa is close to expiring while you’re on our books.
For operators: what direct sponsorship actually requires
If you run a kitchen and want to sponsor a chef directly rather than relying on an agency to solve the problem, the starting point is your own sponsor licence from the Home Office, which takes time to apply for and requires you to demonstrate you can meet the ongoing sponsor duties: right-to-work checks, reporting changes in the worker’s circumstances, and keeping records the Home Office can inspect. Even with a licence in hand, the chef occupation sits outside standard eligibility for a new hire as things stand, so a genuinely new appointment would need to clear the RQF6 threshold in some other way or wait for the rules to move again.
For most of the operators we work with, the practical answer to a kitchen gap is faster and doesn’t touch immigration law at all: book relief or interim cover while you run a proper permanent search, rather than treating sponsorship as an emergency staffing fix it was never designed to be.
For temporary cover, we staff hospitality and contract catering kitchens across London and the North West with a two-hour response commitment in our core cities, and every chef we send already has the right to work you need on file before their first shift.
Frequently asked questions
Can a chef agency sponsor my Skilled Worker visa?
Generally no. Home Office sponsor guidance requires the sponsor to be the worker’s genuine, direct employer with ongoing control over their work, and blocks using a licence to supply a worker as routine labour to third-party clients, which is how a staffing agency’s business model works. A direct employer with its own sponsor licence can sponsor you; an agency placing you across different kitchens normally cannot.
Since when have chefs been ineligible for a Skilled Worker visa?
Since 22 July 2025, when Statement of Changes HC 997 raised the standard Skilled Worker threshold to RQF Level 6. Chefs (occupation code 5434) sit at RQF Level 3 and are not on the Immigration Salary List or the Temporary Shortage List, so new chef applications don’t qualify under the standard route. Anyone with a chef CoS issued before that date can normally continue and extend.
Does ChefsBay sponsor visas for chefs?
No. We’re a temporary staffing agency placing chefs into different client kitchens on assignment, which is the arrangement Home Office sponsor rules don’t permit a licence to be used for. Every chef we place needs their own right to work in the UK confirmed before their first shift, the same as any UK employer requires.
I already have a chef visa through my current employer. Can I move to an agency?
Moving into agency work while sponsored as a chef under the pre-22 July 2025 rules is exactly the kind of question a solicitor or OISC-registered adviser needs to answer against your actual CoS and visa conditions, not a general guide. Get that checked before you hand in notice anywhere.
Is there any way for a UK kitchen to sponsor a new chef from overseas right now?
Under the current rules, a new standard Skilled Worker application for the chef occupation doesn’t meet the RQF6 threshold, and chef isn’t on the Immigration Salary List or Temporary Shortage List. An employer would need the role to genuinely sit at a different, eligible occupation code, or wait for a rule change, and that assessment should go through a solicitor or OISC adviser rather than a general staffing conversation.
Need chef cover while you sort out a longer-term hire, sponsored or otherwise? Get Staff Now and we’ll tell you honestly what we can and can’t help with. Right to work sorted already and looking for shifts? Register as a chef and we’ll take it from there.