UK Sponsor Register Alerts: Licence Added or Removed

Find out which UK employers just gained or lost a Home Office sponsor licence. The Home Office publishes the register of licensed sponsors as one file that it replaces every week, and publishes no list of what changed. This actor keeps the last file it saw, compares it with the newest one, and returns one row per organisation added or removed, with its rating, routes (Skilled Worker and others) and town. Turn on monitoring and run it on a schedule to get, and pay for, only the changes you have not been given yet.

Who uses it: recruiters and agencies who want to approach employers the week they become able to sponsor, job boards and relocation services that flag "can sponsor a visa", immigration advisers watching a client's or competitor's licence, and sales teams selling to newly licensed employers.

Related actors: to check one named employer against the register today, use UK Visa Sponsor Licence Check. This actor answers a different question: what changed.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the organisationNames field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-sponsor-register-change-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"organisationNames":["<example>"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Input

{
  "organisationNames": []
}

One name or part of a name per line. Only sponsors whose registered name contains one of these are reported. Leave empty to see every sponsor added or removed. Accepted formats: Tesco, Barclays, care.

Leave the name list empty to see every change, or add names (or parts of names) to watch. Optional filters narrow by route (for example Skilled Worker), by town or county, and by added or removed. Filters apply before anything is returned or billed.

The first run has nothing to compare. gov.uk keeps only the current file, so the first run can only store it. Turn on "Return a sample of the current register" to get up to Max changes organisations as LISTED rows on that first run (billed like any row); otherwise the run returns nothing and is free. The first real changes arrive with the next weekly publication.

Monitoring. With "Only return changes I have not been given yet" on, each run returns only the changes from publications after the last one you were given; a run on an unchanged register returns one row with changeCount: 0 and costs nothing. Name the watchlist (deltaName) to keep separate schedules apart. A sponsor that only moved to a different town is not reported as added or removed.

Output

One row per sponsor change, for example:

query	found	status	changeSummary	changeCount	truncated	monitorStatus	changes	changeType	organisationName	town	county	holdsSkilledWorkerLicence	rating	licenceTypes	routes	licences	registerDate	previousRegisterDate	registerFileUrl	sourceUrl	scrapedAt
example	true	OK					<all changes (full list)>			<town/city>						<licences (full detail)>					1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Example rows from a real run on the register published 2026-10-09 (a first run with the sample switched on, so the rows are LISTED; once a second publication exists, rows are ADDED or REMOVED and carry previousRegisterDate):

changeType	organisationName	town	county	rating	routes	registerDate
LISTED	AaruvikA Limited	Edinburgh	null	A	Skilled Worker	2026-10-09
LISTED	Asian African Foods Ltd	London	null	A	Skilled Worker	2026-10-09
LISTED	CORBY MUSLIM ASSOCIATION	Corby	null	A	Tier 2 Ministers of Religion	2026-10-09

changeType is ADDED (on the newer register, not the older), REMOVED (the reverse) or LISTED (a sample row, only when you ask for one). registerDate is the publication the change was seen on and previousRegisterDate the one it was compared with. Missing values (county, rating) are null, never an empty string. A run with nothing to return comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged.

Pricing

• Sponsor change returned: $6 per 1,000 changes

Plus a $0.004 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.

Example runs

Paste any of these into the Input tab and press Start. None needs a key, a token or an account of your own beyond an Apify login.

See what the register looks like now (first run). Stores the register and returns a 20-organisation sample.

{
  "emitBaseline": true,
  "maxItems": 20
}

Newly licensed Skilled Worker sponsors in Leeds, each week. Schedule it weekly; each run returns only the changes you have not seen.

{
  "changeType": "added",
  "route": "Skilled Worker",
  "towns": ["Leeds"],
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "deltaName": "leeds-new-sponsors"
}

Has a named employer lost its licence?

{
  "organisationNames": ["Tesco", "Barclays"],
  "changeType": "removed",
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true
}

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-sponsor-register-change-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"organisationNames":["<example>"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-sponsor-register-change-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"organisationNames":["<example>"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-sponsor-register-change-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"organisationNames":["{{register comparison}}"]}, mapping the row's register comparison into the organisationNames array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "uk visa sponsor register changes" — the agent will find and run this actor.