The Evolution Of The UK Innovator Program

In March 2019, the Home Office announced that the Tier 1 – Entrepreneur visa would close and at the same time, ushered in a new program to take its place: the Innovator visa. Although the move was sudden, it was not completely unexpected since the UK government had received numerous concerns to strengthen the security of the Entrepreneur visa against those who abuse the immigration system.

By way of background, in 2015, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) conducted a review of the program as instructed by the Prime Minister. The MAC's report found that applicants of the Entrepreneur visa did not appear to engage in much business activity and that there were many instances of migrants establishing low growth potential businesses, which were also not particularly innovative. In addition, there was evidence of fraudulent applications, for example, applicants were submitting identical business plans or were not investing the required amount.