Business Visas

There are four types of visa available to highly skilled business people who need to stay for an extended periods of time: Business, Business Visitor, Investor and Sole Representative.

The Business visa category is specifically aimed at those persons who intend to own and manage their own business in the UK. Major conditions of this visa include a minimum investment of £200,000 into your business and the creation of two jobs for UK nationals or permanent residents.

The Business Visitor visa is for those foreign persons recruited by companies based in the UK. The worker must be a professional and not someone in an unskilled or only semi-skilled industry. The visa is only for six months duration and work undertaken during the person’s time in Britain must be related to work in your home country or country of residence from which you come. Examples of individuals falling under this category include persons attending trade fairs in the UK, business people embarking on negotiations or consultants assigned to UK-based projects which are expected to take longer than just a few days or weeks.

The Sole Representative visa is a category aimed at those companies which have a major base of operations outside the UK and wish to establish a base or extend operations in the UK. A restriction of this visa is that the sole representative must not work in the UK outside of what is required to set up the branch or wholly owned subsidiary of the foreign corporation.

The visa is initially granted for one year, and may be extended for a further 3 years. After this, the sole representative may apply for permanent residency, which may then lead to citizenship.

The Investor visa is also known as the ‘Rolls Royce’ category for the reason that each applicant must at the very least establish he/she has £1,000, 000 (one million pounds) , three-quarters of which must be allocated to specific investments and one-quarter of which may be freely invested in any way the Investor chooses.

Potential investors may not work beyond what it takes them to manage their investments. However, after the first year, Investors may be permitted to stay for a further three years and after this period of time seek permanent residency, which may then lead to naturalization as a British citizen.