UK Immigration Lawyer’s Guidance on Sponsor Licence Action Plans
If you are googling the internet for information on sponsor licence action plans you need to speak to UK Immigration Lawyers about what the plan will mean for your continued sponsorship of Skilled Worker Visa holders or other sponsored employees.
The government has increased its focus on sponsorship compliance. This means they will impose more plans and they will last longer—up to 12 months instead of three months.
UK Online and London-Based Immigration Solicitors and Sponsorship Licence Lawyers
For sponsor licence management and action plan advice call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.
What is a Home Office sponsor licence action plan?
If you are fortunate enough to be granted a sponsor licence it comes with an A rating. If you lose your A rating it unsurprisingly goes to a B rating. What many company owners, HR directors and key personnel don’t realise is that the B rating is accompanied by a sponsor licence action plan.
A Home Office official can downgrade you from A to B for not fully complying with your licence reporting and recording duties. The plan, drawn up by the Home Office, is designed to get you back up to an A rating by identifying the problems and giving you the route to return to A status.
Many sponsor licence holders say they are content to be a B but the rules say that your company can't stay as a B and remain indefinitely on an action plan. In addition, with a B rating, your company can't allocate new certificates of sponsorship so effectively you are precluded from recruiting additional sponsored workers from overseas. Even if you don’t intend to expand and recruit the inability to allocate certificates can become a problem if any of your employees leave their jobs as you can't replace them with Skilled Worker Visa holders.
Advice on action plans
Our Sponsorship Licence Lawyers regularly advise on action plans. The frequency of requests for help is increasing as the Home Office has turned its focus from sponsor licence renewal to compliance.
Nowadays you can find that the Home Office is suggesting an action plan for what, a few years ago, would have been deemed a minor transgression of sponsor licence reporting and recording duties. Equally, in the current climate of licence enforcement, Home Office auditors can be keener to recommend either the suspension or revocation of a licence. This approach can be a real issue, especially for SMEs who, for example, may have struggled with 100% compliance when their level one user was on maternity leave or their level two user was on extended sick leave and licence issues that ordinarily would have been picked up weren’t.
When you are told that the Home Office will be recommending a B rating and an action plan (that comes with a fee payable to the Home Office) you have three options:
- Say no – if you don’t accept the action plan or don’t pay the fee the Home Office will revoke your sponsor licence. This means any current sponsored employees won't be able to remain in your employment as they will have their Skilled Worker Visas curtailed. They can either leave the UK or try to find a new sponsor who can allocate a new certificate of sponsorship. If you continue their employment after they are no longer eligible to work for your company then you place the business at risk of Civil Penalty Notices
- Do nothing – if the letter from the Home Office is ignored the Home Office will end up revoking the licence. When a licence is revoked a business owner can't normally apply for another licence until the end of the cooling-off period
- Say yes to the action plan and pay the fee
Action plans and losing your licence
If you agree to an action plan but can't meet the standards expected by the Home Office you can ask the Home Office to extend the plan but they will only do this once. With extended action plans of 12 months, an extension would mean that for two years your business can't allocate certificates of sponsorship and recruit new employees on Skilled Worker Visas.
In the past, if the Home Office revoked a licence for serious non-compliance or a business failed an action plan, a business owner might take a pragmatic view and reapply for a licence. However, the Home Office plans to increase the cooling-off period from 12 months to two years. Furthermore, with the focus on compliance, it may be a harder struggle to regain a licence by making a fresh application as the Home Office will look back at the earlier licence refusal.
Avoiding a Home Office action plan
Proactive UK Immigration Lawyers focus on helping licence holders avoid the imposition of an action plan because once you are caught in the Home Office net it is bound to adversely affect how the Home Office views your business and your ability to comply with the rules.
Avoiding a Home Office action plan is all about following the rules. This can be done through the sheer hard work of your key personnel and a measure of good luck or more realistically through regular Immigration Law Training or the use of a professional Sponsor Licence Management Service or a combination of the two.
Our Legal 500 recommended Immigration Solicitors in London can advise your business on a plan to avoid Home Office intervention in its licence. By taking the initiative, you can protect your licence and ultimately save your company time and money.
UK Online and London-Based Immigration Solicitors and Sponsorship Licence Lawyers
For sponsor licence advice management and Work Visa advice call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.
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