The 'genuine entrepreneur test' and the Tier 1 visa process

Edgewater Legal authored a detailed post on Free Movement last week entitled 'Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visas: is Britain open for business?'

Tier 1 (Entrepreneurs)

The long and short of the piece is that, *spoiler alert*, the introduction of a 'genuine entrepreneur test' quite quickly cut the numbers applying in this category, and that the route is not currently business-friendly.

We question how much entrepreneurial talent the UK is losing by the virtue of the high refusal rate in the category (50%) while looking at the difficulties in identifying entrepreneurial talent in a more general sense, outside of the context of the immigration route, and the wisdom of entrusting decisions regarding business viability to Home Office civil servants.

How many are refused under the 'genuine entrepreneur test'?

At the current time we do not know how many individuals have been refused an entrepreneur visa as a result of a failure to pass the 'genuine entrepreneur test'. However, EL will shortly be making a FOI request to ask exactly that.

For those with an interview on the horizon and wondering whether it's possible to ask for the questions in advance, unfortunately the Home Office (unsurprisingly) felt that provision of this information would 'prejudice the operation of immigration control', in this FOI request made in late 2015.

We will publish the outcome of the 'genuine entrepreneur test' FOI on these pages.

Main image credit: Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash