Sponsor licence holders are subject to ongoing Home Office scrutiny, from the date of the sponsor licence application process to the day their sponsor licence expires or is revoked, following on from a compliance visit.
As such, licence holders should be prepared to be subjected to a Home Office inspection at any time, while their licence is valid. Inspections are used to identify immigration breaches for which the sponsor licence holder (and migrant workers) could face enforcement action.
The Home Office often relies on intelligence, such as complaints from disgruntled former employees, invalid requests for Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), or issuing CoS without due regard to the Immigration Rules, as grounds to carry out an immigration inspection.
Importantly, sponsors should remember that visits can be unannounced. Organisations should be sufficiently prepared for an inspection to evidence their compliance record and show how they consistently meet the required compliance standards and obligations in order to safeguard the status of their sponsor licence.
This makes it advisable to ensure that immigration compliance is an everyday concern and that the organisation can prove that it is meeting its obligations at any one time through effective processes, systems, and documentation.
We always suggest the Sponsors must have regular compliance reviews (Compliance MOT), sometimes with the support of their lawyers. This is an area we have helped many businesses with.
If the Home Office considers that your Sponsor has breached their sponsor duties and poses a threat to immigration control, they may subject their sponsor licence to suspension while they make further enquiries, downgrade it or revoke the licence in situations where the breaches are ingrained and persistent.
If their sponsor licence is suspended, they will not be able to sponsor new migrants and their business will be removed from the public register of sponsors for the suspension period. However, their current sponsored migrants will be unaffected. They can continue to work.
Those who have received their visas outside the U.K. can also travel to start their employment with the sponsor. However, those whose applications are still outstanding will have their applications paused pending the decision on the compliance action of suspension.
Following the suspension, the sponsor would have 20 working days to file representations against that decision after receiving the letter for the suspension. These must be in writing and will need to be accompanied by robust supporting evidence that rebuts each of the concerns outlined in the suspension letter. The ability to successfully defend a sponsor licence suspension will rest heavily on the quality of evidence provided.
Downgrade B-rating
Every sponsor who has been approved for a sponsor licence, will be granted an A-rating. An A-rated licence means that the sponsoring organisation has the necessary systems and people in place to meet its sponsor duties and is trusted to act in a way appropriate to those approved by the Home Office for licensing.
All A-rating Sponsors will be allowed to assign CoS to migrant workers that the organisation is looking to recruit both home and abroad. The Home Office can take action where there is non-compliance with the rules by downgrading the sponsor licence rating from an A-rating to a B-rating. If an organisation is downgraded to a B-rating, it must meet a time-limited action plan to be reinstated to A-rating.
This plan will set out the steps that need to be taken to regain an A-rating. The Home Office can revoke the licence if the sponsor fails to comply with the action plan or make the necessary improvements in the time provided. If the organisation is downgraded to a B-rating, all sponsored migrants can continue to work for the sponsor and migrants who already have their visas can travel to the U.K. The sponsor will be able to issue CoS to those looking to extend their permission to stay in the UK.
However, the sponsor will not be able to sponsor new migrant workers until improvements have been made.
Revocation
The Home Office may revoke their sponsor licence for a wide range of reasons, including if there is a serious or systematic breach of the sponsor’s duties or if it is deemed that their business poses a threat to immigration control. If their licence is revoked, they can no longer continue to sponsor any more migrants including those already working under the sponsor licence. If they have sponsored overseas workers, but the workers are yet to travel, their visas will be cancelled and they can no longer travel.
They will receive an email to this effect. All those sponsored will receive an email from the Home Office. When your sponsor loses their licence your:
- certificate of sponsorship is cancelled.
- visa is limited to 60 days (or however long you have left on the visa if it’s less than 60 days).
You will have to leave your job and leave the UK unless you make a new visa application within that time.
If you are involved in the reasons why your sponsor lost their licence, your visa will be withdrawn, and you will have to leave the UK immediately.
Unfortunately, there is no right of appeal against a decision to revoke your sponsor’s licence, and importantly, they will not be able to apply for another sponsor licence until 12 months or more have passed since the date of revocation (this is referred to as the “cooling off period”).
Our expert solicitors have experience in this area of immigration law and have successfully assisted both migrants and businesses going through such difficult and challenging times.
