Sponsorship Compliance
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Sponsorship Compliance
What is Sponsorship Compliance?
The Home Office will inspect a sponsor licence holder at some point during the course of their licence’s validity. This is to ensure that the information they provided as part of their application for a sponsor licence is valid and that they can continue to comply with their duties and responsibilities as a licenced sponsor.
What happens during a Home Office compliance visit?
During the visit, the officers will check if:
- Verifying Information submitted with your Sponsorship Application
- You can offer a Job that meets your business requirements
- You are trading and operating in the UK
- You do not represent any threat to immigration control
- You are compliant with the Home Office immigration rules
- Your employee records are up to date
- You have a stable reporting system in place
- Details on projects the sponsored applicants will be working on
- The company is committed to complying with all the duties of sponsorship
Are Sponsorship Compliance Audits unannounced?
The Home Office Sponsor Licence compliance audits may check sponsors at random. These visits can be announced or unannounced
What can be the outcome of a Compliance Audit?
If the compliance officers discover a problem before deciding on the sponsor licence application, the application may be refused.
Alternatively, If the compliance officers find discrepancies with the compliance of the licence during an audit, actions will be taken against the licensed business. This could lead to their licence being revoked, suspended, or downgraded, with repercussions for sponsored employees.
What happens if the Licence is Suspended?
If a sponsor licence is suspended, company will not be able to sponsor new migrants and their business will be removed from the public register of sponsors for the suspension period. Their current sponsored migrants will be unaffected
What happens if the Licence is Revoked?
If a sponsor licence is revoked, any migrants the company sponsors will have their leave curtailed. They will be given 60 days to find alternative sponsorship or leave the United Kingdom. If they have less than 60 days to run on their visa it will not be curtailed, but they must find alternative sponsorship or leave the UK before it expires.
What are the possible reasons for suspension of Sponsor Licence?
Reasons for suspending a sponsor licence include:
- Failing to retain information which is essential to Resident Labour Market Test compliance or job advert submission record.
- Failing to keep appropriate records for sponsored migrants
- Unlawful salary variations
- An authorising officer is inappropriately qualified to assume his or her position.
What causes Sponsor Licence revocation?
Reasons for revoking a sponsor licence include:
- Having given false information when making the Sponsor Licence Application,
- Employing a migrant in a job that does not meet the skill level requirements,
- Using a CoS to fill a vacancy other than the one specified on the CoS assigned for that role.
Human resource policy failures are a common reason for revocation.
Can the Sponsor Licence revocation be appealed?
There is no right of appeal against a decision to revoke a sponsor licence and companies will not be allowed to apply for a sponsor licence again until the end of the appropriate cooling off period (normally 12 months or could be longer in certain cases) from the date their licence is revoked.
How much is the penalty for hiring an illegal worker?
The maximum penalty a licence holder can be asked to pay is £20,000 per illegal worker, or £5,000 if they are Croatian. The amount they will have to pay will depend on whether they have been found to employ illegal workers before, whether they have reported the illegal worker to the Home Office, whether they have co-operated with the Home Office and whether they comply with their employer duties to prevent illegal working. This penalty also depends on when the employee started working for the company
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