A Tier 4 sponsor can in certain circumstances become a legacy sponsor.
Please see the table below which explains the impact this will have on Tier 4 students in further detail:
If your Tier 4 sponsor
becomes a legacy
sponsor:
What will happen
Before you make an application to
the Home Office
Legacy sponsors are not allowed to sponsor any new students or offer any new courses to existing students.
If your sponsor becomes a legacy sponsor and you were assigned a CAS before the sponsor became a legacy sponsor which has not yet been used to support an application for leave to enter the UK, you will still be able to apply for leave using the assigned CAS.
Before you travel to the UK
We will process any application for leave to enter the UK, supported by a CAS that your sponsor has assigned before it became a legacy sponsor, which has been made but not yet been decided at the point your sponsor has become a legacy sponsor.
You will be allowed to enter the UK (subject to satisfactorily meeting all immigration requirements) and to study your course with your Tier 4 sponsor for the rest of your current permission to stay.
Tier 4 Policy Guidance version 11/2014 page 66 of 81
If you are already in the UK studying
Legacy sponsors can continue to sponsor students who are already studying with them until either they finish their course or until their legacy sponsor’s licence expires, whichever happens first.
If you need to extend your leave so that you can complete your course, re-sit exams or repeat periods in order to complete your course, your legacy sponsor will be able to apply to us for a CAS to assign to them.
If you have an application under consideration with the Home Office
We will process any application for leave to remain, supported by a CAS that your sponsor has assigned before becoming a legacy sponsor, which has been made but not yet been decided at the point your sponsor has become a legacy sponsor.
Tier 4 Policy Guidance version 11/2014 page 67 of 81
Annex 3: Verification and other Checks
1. We will ask for a number of verifiable documents to allow us to consider the application.
2. We may want to check the supporting documents you send with your application, therefore you must ensure that all the evidence comes from a source that can be clearly identified and that it can be independently confirmed as being genuine.
When we will do a check?
3. There are two situations in which we will undertake a check:
• verification checks – where we have reasonable doubts that the documents are
genuine; or
• other checks – where we carry out further checks, for example, where we have doubts about an application or the documents sent with the application but the doubts are not serious enough for us to make a verification check.
Annex 3: Verification and other Checks