Help if Your Business Receives a Sponsor Licence Suspension Notice
If your business has received a sponsor licence suspension notice, you need to act to try to avoid the suspension.
At OTS Solicitors our Sponsorship Licence Lawyers specialise in sponsor licence management and troubleshooting. We act quickly to explain what your business needs to do and to help you understand the business implications of sponsor licence suspension or revocation.
UK Online and London-Based Immigration Solicitors and Sponsorship Licence Lawyers
For immigration advice call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.
What is a sponsor licence suspension notice?
A sponsor licence suspension notice notifies a sponsor licence holder that the Home Office has decided to suspend a sponsor licence.
Immigration Solicitors say that receipt of a suspension notice should be a real wake-up call. If your business does not already have specialist Sponsorship Licence Lawyers advising them then now is the time to call the experts. The notice only gives a narrow window of opportunity to repair relations with the Home Office and sort out any Home Office identified concerns that led to the decision to suspend.
When a sponsor licence is suspended a business cannot sponsor any new sponsored workers on Skilled Worker Visas, Health and Care Worker Visas or any other sponsored route the sponsor licence covers. If the eventual outcome is licence revocation any existing sponsored employees will have their visas curtailed (normally to 60 days) and they will need to find a new sponsor or leave the UK within the 60 days. The recruitment of new sponsored recruits will be put on hold and any visa extension application by an existing sponsored employee will not be processed by the Home Office until the suspension is resolved.
What happens if a business ignores a sponsor licence suspension notice?
The notice should give reasons for the decision to suspend and the next steps. There is no obligation to reply but if you do not respond to the notice your licence will be revoked. You will then not be able to appeal against the sponsor licence revocation decision because you chose to ignore the suspension notice and not engage with the Home Office.
Sometimes business owners think that it is OK to ignore a notice to suspend their licence as they will be able to apply for a new licence. However, if you ignore the notice and your licence is revoked, your business cannot apply for another sponsor licence for at least 12 months. This is called the cooling-off period. You can try to challenge a cooling-off period by making a judicial review application but that is time-consuming and expensive in comparison to responding to the notice.
Why do businesses receive sponsor licence suspension notices?
Your business should be told in the notice why the Home Office has concerns. Sometimes notices are very detailed but in other cases, a sponsor licence holder may think that the notice contents are very generic and ‘cut and pasted’ because they lack detail.
Our Sponsorship Licence Lawyers read a lot of suspension notices and can advise on whether your notice is typical or not and the steps you can take to retain your licence.
Most notices refer to sponsor licence problems such as:
- Not reporting on the sponsor management system as required by the immigration rules and Home Office guidance
- Not keeping adequate records
- Not carrying out right-to-work checks in accordance with the latest guidance
- Not complying with immigration rules such as failure to pay the required minimum salary threshold for the Skilled Worker Visa holder’s standard occupational classification code or changing the sponsored worker’s job description from that stated on the employee’s certificate of sponsorship
- Allocating certificates of sponsorship in situations where Home Office officials do not believe there was a genuine vacancy
There are many other examples of non-compliance with sponsor licence reporting and recording duties and immigration law compliance.
Time frame to respond to a sponsor licence suspension notice
There are Home Office imposed time limits to respond to a suspension notice. You only have 20 working days to reply. As your Sponsorship Licence Lawyers will need to investigate the Home Office allegations and reasons behind the suspension you need to give them as much time as possible to investigate and respond on your behalf and present your evidence to show that the decision to suspend is wrong.
Challenging a Home Office sponsor licence suspension notice
You can challenge a suspension notice and if you are successful the Home Office will reinstate your A rating. If the Home Office does not accept your submissions and evidence, you may still be able to work with the Home Office to get the licence reinstated and upgraded to an A rating.
A Sponsorship Licence Lawyer can independently assess the reasons why the Home Office is suspending your licence and advise on whether your best option is to challenge the suspension or to respond by acknowledging some or all the identified Home Office concerns and the remedial action taken.
Home Office investigations after the issue of a sponsor licence suspension notice
After your Sponsorship Licence Lawyers respond to the suspension notice the Home Office will decide on its next steps. For example, if our Business Immigration Solicitors have said the allegations were factually inaccurate and explained why with evidence in support of your position, the Home Office may withdraw its suspension and your business will revert to its A rating. If the Home Office considers further investigation is necessary to decide on whether a B rating and an action plan is justified or the revocation of the licence is appropriate there is likely to be further Home Office inspection visits and audits.
The Home Office will normally decide on the outcome within 20 days of your response to its suspension notice. However, some complex investigations can take longer.
Responding to a Home Office sponsor licence suspension notice
If you receive a notice it is tempting to fire off a letter to the Home Office telling them that they have got their facts wrong and making it clear in your letter that you are taking the suspension notice personally and are affronted by it. Alternatively, you may want to respond by minimising any non-compliance compared to the actions of your competitors with sponsor licences or saying the rules are onerous and frankly ridiculous for any busy organisation to keep up with.
These types of responses to the Home Office explain why it's best to speak to specialist Sponsorship Licence Lawyers as soon as you receive a notice so they can go through the allegations with you and work out if there are any matters where you accept your compliance has not been 100% and the reasons why. For example, key personnel may have been unexpectedly off and you may not have had a backup plan in place. You may have remedied the issues identified by the Home Office by reviewing all your procedures, implementing external audits and Immigration Law Training by Sponsorship Licence Lawyers or engaging a professional Sponsor Licence Management Service to manage the licence for you.
In some investigations, there is a lot of communication with the Home Office and that can work best for you if you have Sponsorship Licence Lawyers acting for you who know the standards the Home Office expect you to achieve and who can help reassure the Home Office that with their assistance and Immigration Law Training, any historical non-compliance issues have been dealt with and lessons learnt from the shock of a suspension notice.
Our Business Immigration Solicitors are happy to talk to your company about how we can assist you in dealing with a suspension notice, provide Immigration Law Training or discuss how our Sponsor Licence Management Service could help your business.
UK Online and London-Based Immigration Solicitors and Sponsorship Licence Lawyers
For immigration advice call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.
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