Immigration | Work permits

UK immigration law experts

Accredited consultants
Registered with IAA in the UK (Number: F2001-00004).
Successful results
Confirmed as the largest-by-volume UK immigration consultant in the world.
Long established
Advising on UK immigration for over 25 years.

What makes us different?

To provide an industry-leading, high-quality, personalised service to each of our clients, Sable International has placed great emphasis on developing a skilled team, who first and foremost have the right attitude to delivery. With the majority of boutique firms being acquired by larger businesses, service delivery standards in the sector are often mediocre and transactional in nature. Our culture presents an opportunity to offer clients the best of both worlds: large-scale resources combined with a personal approach. Along with our internal commitments to continually improve our performance and seek out ways to achieve more for our clients, we believe that Sable International will be able to offer you the service you expect.

We're here to help. Speak to our business immigration experts now.

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About us

Sable International has been providing immigration advice for over 30 years, and the client and candidate experience is ultimately at the core of everything we do. We have the technology and infrastructure to provide our corporate immigration clients with a range of valuable reporting, including quarterly visa expiry reports. We also ensure that all corporate clients have a bi-annual service delivery review, and every client is assigned a dedicated OISC qualified caseworker and separate relationship manager to ensure that our service is consistently at, or above, expectations.

We pride ourselves in offering a proactive, relationship-led, client-centric service. This not only includes assisting the business with their corporate immigration needs, at both an operational and strategic level, but equally important, holding your hand through your personal immigration journey. We will provide your candidates with a dedicated immigration consultant who is able to give an empathic, personalised service.

With Sable International you get:

Dedicated OISC consultants with direct access to the end client and candidate

Mock UKVI audits

Phone calls answered in three rings

Email responses within four working hours

SLA of 24 hours

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Navigate your corporate compliance with confidence

Aside from the day-to-day cases, much of our work revolves around corporate compliance for sponsor duties and responsibilities. The obligations placed upon sponsoring businesses can be rather complex.

Failure to meet these obligations, particularly with regards to record keeping and reporting, or behaviours that are considered incompatible with that of a licence holder, will result in punitive action being taken against the employer.

In addition to potential financial penalties, should a licence be revoked due to non-compliance, the business would not be able to sponsor any further overseas workers and any existing sponsored employees would be required to leave the company.

The Home Office also publishes a list of revoked licences, so there is a significant reputational risk element to also consider. From our recent meetings with the UKVI, they have made it very clear that they have renewed focus on sponsor enforcement activity and we are seeing many more of our clients now being subjected to audit.

We work closely with our clients to mitigate these risks. With each completed application, we will provide you with a compliance pack that includes the required documents for your HR files in the event of a UKVI inspection. On a more holistic level, we are also able to provide a periodic 'mock' UKVI audit and findings report, to act as a licence health check and ensure standards are being maintained.

Want to have a free, no obligation consultation with us? Get in touch and we would be delighted to arrange.

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What our clients say

“Sable International's professionalism and dedication have been evident in every interaction we've had. Their prompt responses, proactive approach, and consistent delivery of high-quality service have set a standard that few can match. Their reliability has been a cornerstone in our successful collaboration."

Head of Global Mobility at large multi-national relocation firm

“From the start of our collaboration, Sable International exhibited a clear understanding of our corporate objectives. They have tailored their services and processes to address our client requirements. Throughout our partnership, Sable's professionalism and attention to detail have been evident. Their expertise has been showcased in their deliverables and in their proactive approach to problem-solving.”

Head of Global Immigration, international law firm.

“We have been working with Sable International for just over three years now (June 2023). They handle all of our corporate immigration and UKVI compliance. We find their service refreshing compared to our previous provider. They are always responsive, proactive and appear to be genuinely invested in trying to obtain the best outcome for us and the candidate.”

HR Director, asset management firm, London

Our values

At Sable International we have four core values to guide our employees to make the right decisions. Our values drive our behaviours and put our clients at the heart of all we do.

1. Solve

We centre our business around our clients.

Our mission is to solve, through providing innovative, creative and personalised solutions to every company; always recognising that every client and candidates’ circumstances are different. We have evolved our service offering and infrastructure over the years to meet these needs. The business started over 30 years ago primarily as an accounting and immigration firm. Due to the needs of our clients, we have expanded to offer foreign exchange services, cross-jurisdictional tax and wealth advice and corporate education services. Our commitment to delivering exceptional client care means we prioritise finding solutions appropriate to each circumstance.

2. Care

We care deeply about the needs and well-being of our clients.

To date, we have serviced in excess of 250,000 candidates with a Net Promoter (NP) Score of 4.9/5. To us, it’s important to create a sense of community in and around our business, where our consultants and our clients can collaborate and learn from one another. This helps generate rapport and allows us to consistently increase our service delivery levels. We have a measurable internal service level agreement (SLA) of a four-hour response time for emails and phone calls to be answered within three rings. We ensure that the phone is always answered, and a client can always reach us without infuriating chatbots or AI automation. We are delighted to provide direct access to a qualified person to meet your needs.

3. Grow

Sable International is an ambitious company with ambitious clients.

We help our clients grow their businesses whilst extending our influence in as many areas and expertise as possible. Our people are growing their talents and experience, creating an extraordinarily group of successful alumni. We invest in the growth of our staff through contributions towards their qualifications or study and have internal training programmes to retain our top talent. To our clients, this converts into industry leaders with top level qualifications and experience.

4. Enjoy

We believe that work should be enjoyable.

All of our consultants are passionate about their areas of expertise and love meeting our clients. We have an energised and lively working culture. This is one of the things that sets us apart from other professional services firms. We host monthly drinks in the office to help our employees engage and collaborate with other departments. This internal rapport building helps ensure that our teams work seamlessly across departments and between countries.

From feedback, we know that our clients value an immigration firm that truly understands their unique needs and offers practical solutions. By combining large-scale resources with a personalised approach, we ensure that each client receives the attention and service they deserve. Our commitment to delivering excellence is ingrained in our core values, and we continuously seek ways to improve and innovate without losing sight of what is essential – providing an exceptional client experience.

Meet your business immigration team

Talk to our experienced consultants, OISC-registered advisers to see how we can help with your business immigration needs.

Darren Faife

Managing Director: Business immigration
Saskia Johnston

Service Delivery Director
Jodi Adams

UK Consultant Support
Tobias Strom

Business Immigration Consultant
Maxine Furlong

Business Immigration Consultant
Nicola Digby

Senior Consultant
Julian Dearson

Head of Immigration Compliance
Coco Chen

Education Corporate Service Consultant
Steve Paxton

Managing Director: UK Education Corporate Services

Darren Faife

Managing Director: Business immigration

Darren has over 30 years’ experience heading award-winning organisations as well as providing immigration and compliance services to large-scale, multinational businesses.
Having run his own successful immigration practice for over 20 years, Darren possesses a strong commercial mindset and provides an efficient delivery of strategic solutions, while consistently driving value contributing to core business objectives.
Darren joined Sable International in 2020 to bring his wealth of expertise to our business immigration services. He is registered with the IAA at level 2 in UK Immigration.
Outside of work, Darren is a “car man”, who makes his annual trip to Le Mans every year.
Saskia Johnston

Service Delivery Director

Saskia has over 10 years of experience within the Sable International Team. Saskia graduated from the University of Cape Town with a B. Sc. (Masters) in finance and a sub-major in economics. She has a keen interest in financial services and immigration which made her the perfect candidate to help drive our Business Immigration team forward. Saskia has a passion for exceptional customer service and is now responsible for the Business Immigration team’s service delivery.
A confident, enthusiastic individual with a great attitude and a keen motivation to learn. Saskia has spent the last decade growing a very strong and powerful professional business development network in London. Her growth and strategic approach to relationship-led new business has produced some fantastic results and she has enjoyed implementing these successful sales strategies with her team in London. She has extensive experience in all aspects of foreign exchange and business immigration and can apply her high-level, target-driven sales and account management approach to the success of her role.
Outside of work, Saskia loves experiencing new cultures and travel is at the top of her “spare time” list.”
Jodi Adams

UK Consultant Support

Jodi is a goal orientated and dedicated individual with an honours finance educational background and shares a passion for people with over five years of experience within the customer service industry. After Jodi completed her studies she decided to embark on a new experience and applied to Sable International, where she will assist the Business Immigration team.
In Jodi’s spare time she enjoys taking scenic pictures and adventuring outside Cape Town admiring the beautiful views nature has to offer.
Tobias Strom

Business Immigration Consultant

Tobias was born and raised in London to American and German parents. After completing his law degree from Nottingham Trent University he has worked across both the UK and USA before finding his passion in immigration.

He joined Sable as a registered adviser with the IAA at level 1 and has extensive knowledge in both immigration and nationality, assisting private and corporate clients with their UK immigration matters.

He loves playing football amongst other sports and is an avid Tottenham Hotspurs fan.
Maxine Furlong

Business Immigration Consultant

Maxine grew up in Cape Town, South Africa and has completed her BComm degree.
She joined our Immigration team in our Cape Town office where she gained valuable experience in UK immigration and citizenship casework.
Maxine has since moved to our London office and has completed her IAA level 1 exam; and continues to broaden her knowledge and experience in UK immigration.
In her spare time Maxine will take any opportunity to travel, explore new cities and cultures.
Nicola Digby

Senior Consultant

Nicola has over 14 years of immigration experience in private and corporate immigration, with a focus on large-scale, multinational business immigration. She graduated from the University of Wolverhampton with a Bachelor of Law and has worked in the immigration sector since this time.

She joined Sable International as a Senior Consultant and is registered with the OSIC as a level 2 UK immigration adviser.

Outside of work, she enjoys seeing as much of the world as possible, spending time with friends, family and her two cats. She also plays netball for her local club.
Julian Dearson

Head of Immigration Compliance

Julian joined the Home Office, Immigration Department in 1983 where he processed and managed multiple immigration and nationality applications. In 1991 he established Dearson Winyard, a company that went on to be one of the largest and most successful independent immigration advisory firms in the UK. After 26 years of success, the company was sold and Julian has spent the last five years pursuing his own personal ambitions.

Julian is responsible for establishing and managing an immigration compliance offering for business immigration clients. This includes undertaking compliance audits to evaluate our clients' compliance with the UKVI sponsor licence requirements. Julian has a broad and varied immigration experience, covering both corporate and private client work, including sponsor licence applications.

Outside of work, Julian spends much of his free time either dog walking or away in his RV with his family.
Coco Chen

Education Corporate Service Consultant

Coco was born in Taiwan and raised in Hong Kong. She completed her bachelor law degree in the United Kingdom.
Before joining Sable International she worked in a London city law firm as an immigration paralegal.
Outside of work she enjoys oil painting and spending time with family and friends.
Steve Paxton

Managing Director: UK Education Corporate Services

Steve is the Managing Director of the UK Education Corporate Services division. He is an experienced international investment business owner, UK independent school boarding expert, UK Child/Student sponsor licence specialist, including overseeing many UKVI compliance inspections and has been the Commercial Director of a UK immigration firm.
As a student global mobility specialist, he intends to make Sable International a trusted supplier of advice and support to UK independent schools and their worldwide agents, in the complex sector of Home Office compliance and visa acquisition for UK-bound international students.
Outside of work, Steve loves travelling, spending time with his family and new grandchild, a quadruple World Cup hockey coach and player, and is currently an England hockey masters player.

UK Business Immigration Services