What to include in your Community Sponsorship Application
Section 2: About your personnel – Lead Sponsor
Please note that this will contain their personal data so should not be shared widely. The Home Office will run security checks on the person named here.
The person named here must hold authority for the charity or CIC to represent them. This means that this person will usually be a senior manager, Trustee or similar. If their position doesn’t fit within these roles, you should be ready to demonstrate the lines of accountability between that person and the organisation mentioned in 1.1
If the named Lead Sponsor is not a UK passport holder, they will be asked to submit evidence that proves their right to reside in the UK.
The contact information provided here will be used for all correspondence from the Home Office in relation to the application. If your Lead Sponsor would like for others to receive the correspondence too, they should indicate this in the email when they send in the application.
2.13 Application Status
This section asks the status of application you are making.
- Approval in Principle (AiP) – you will be able to submit without funding or housing in place for your application
- Full Approval – you are submitting with funding and housing in place
We recommend that groups apply for approval in principle wherever possible. Please note that if you apply through this method, you will need to resubmit your application form once you have found a property.
2.14 Support Personnel
In this section, you will indicate the roles you have determined your core team will carry out. It is the responsibility of the Lead Sponsor to ensure that those who are recruited as volunteers in these roles have relevant experience and are appropriately vetted to work closely with refugees.
The volunteers mentioned here will not go through security clearance with the Home Office and may change over time. We recommend organising your group by naming group leads for Project Management/Group Lead, Safeguarding Lead, Welfare Lead, Finance Lead and Language Lead.
Keep the summary of experience here short, the Home Office aren’t looking for a full CV for each group member, rather, how your skills and experience will be useful in supporting refugees.