In its bid to stimulate economic growth and innovation, UK home office has launched in June a new “start-up” visa for entrepreneurs to entice more non-European individuals to come and set up enterprises in the UK. 

The new visas are to become available from spring of 2019 and designed to widen the applicant pool of entrepreneurs and make the visa process “faster and smoother”. Currently, non-European individuals looking to start a business in UK apply under the Tier 1 Graduate Entrepreneur Visa if they hold a university degree, but these visa applications has a 48 percent application refusal rate, largely because of the strict criteria, for example, When assessing entrepreneur applications, Home Office caseworkers must, assess the viability of each applicant's business plans using the "genuine entrepreneur test." If the caseworker considers the business is unlikely to be successful, the application will be rejected. The question here is the Home Office caseworkers are not best person to predict the future success, or failure, of a business.

The new Start-Up Visa applicants will first have to be endorsed by an approved body before they can apply to the Home Office for their visa. The list of approved endorsers will include business sponsors and accelerators, as well as universities.

It's a more pragmatic approach to ensuring applications and business plans are being considered by qualified parties. It's more practical to grant businesses, instead of government servants, the opportunity to assess the entrepreneurs’ plan. The new visa undoubtedly creates a huge opportunity in the UK to welcome more foreign entrepreneurs. More than this, after UK, it may motivate more European countries to relax their visa policies and do the same.