Is contract employment possible on Tier 2 General VISA

[lb2205]

Hi,

I was looking at the eligibility page on the UKBA site [u]https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/overview[/u] and I do not see any mentioned of full time or contract employment being a requirement for the Tier 2 General VISA. Does this mean I can take a role that is contract?

[Wanderer]

Not possible.

[ravisb_2014]

Do you mean that Tier 2 General VISA holder can't apply for any kind of job (Contract/Permanent) ?
Then what is use of Tier 2 (General) VISA ?

[Wanderer]

Can apply for perm with COS and a sponsor.

Contracting isn't possible because you'd be employed by your own Limited (no right to sponsor) or by an Umbrella which means you are not directly controlled by your employer, there was a post on here about it recently.

You can go down the black hole of these 'umbrellas' that get you to assign a contract of yours to them and they sponsor etc, but they take a hefty chunk and fail the control test too, so if the objective is ILR, I'm sure in five years time the UKVI will be onto this.....

And in any case, contracting means (usually) a call on Friday, start Monday, so no time to dick around looking for sponsors etc, especially for the neophyte contractor.

I'm a contractor and I am a legitimate business, if contracting is what you want, then wait for T1 Gen to reopen (if ever) or try T1 Ent, tho I'm not sure u can do contracting on that visa...

[onlooker]

It is possible to do contract work via such an umbrella. The difficulty is that the contract itself must be direct to client, not via an agency, and the client should not mind you being on a Tier 2. A very small perecentage of contracts on the UK market would satisfy both these requirements. It used to be easier until last autumn when the rules were tightened and HO started doing on-site checks.

[ravisb_2014]

Can dependent of Tier 2(General) holder work on any kind of jobs (permanent/contract) ?

[moonlight55]

Yes (except in fields marked as restricted in your visa/BRP).