A licenced Sponsor has a number of obligations, responsibilities and duties that it is required to meet in order to retain its licence and its ability to ‘sponsor’ foreign workers.
Those duties include amongst others, record-keeping duties and reporting duties.
The Home Office regularly carries out inspections and where they find a failure to comply with sponsor duties will either downgrade, suspend or revoke a licence. This may affect the sponsor’s ability to continue to employ its sponsored employees and recruit further non-EEA workers. The number of sponsors having their licences revoked are on the up and the decision increasingly difficult to challenge.
It is therefore imperative that all Sponsors have systems in place to ensure compliance with the guidance.
Stage 1 – Suspension
Following a visit from the Home Office, if a sponsor is found to be non-compliant with its obligations under the Skilled Worker guidance, it will initially in most cases receive a suspension letter.
The suspension letter will give detailed reasons for coming to that decision to suspend and a sponsor will be given the opportunity to respond.
It is imperative at this stage to seek legal advice to ensure the best chances of succeeding. If following these representations that Home Office does not reinstate the licence, they will in most instances proceed with revoking the licence.
Stage – 2 Revocation
Sometimes, depending on the circumstances of the case the Home Office may accept some of the representations made and remove some of the previous reasons from its decision. They may however still find that there are breaches or even one single breach which they find is sufficient to justify revocation.
A further attempt at this stage should be made to address the issues and if a Sponsor feels that the decision is unlawful should consider challenging the decision by way of Judicial Review.
Stage 3 – Pre-Action Protocol
In order to comply with the protocols of Judicial Review, the Sponsor must provide a legitimate basis on which it intends to challenge the decision. This is to provide the Home Office with an opportunity to address the issues raised one more time before legal action is taken.
Attempts should be made to resolve the outstanding issues with Home Office through negotiation.
Stage 4 – Judicial Review
If you do not receive a favourable response or receive no response at all, the next step is to apply for permission for Judicial Review of the decision to revoke your Skilled Worker Sponsor Licence.
Judicial Review is a remedy of last resort and should only be filed if there are good grounds to do so.
We advise on Judicial Review applications regularly and more often than not we are able to conclude the matter successfully before the matter ever gets to a judge.
Key points
- Request a copy of the visiting officer’s report to identify any discrepancies
- Address each point in detail with a credible explanation
- Where relevant accept your failings
- Address how you will overcome your failings
We are Here to Help
At Connaught Law, we are dedicated to providing quality advice and representation to our clients. If you’ve received a Skilled Worker Sponsor Licence Suspension or Revocation letter, please get in touch so that we can provide you with an honest assessment of your situation and advise on the best approach to take.
