BHD Corporate Business immigration Department Update

We manage your Sponsorship Licence so you can get on with your business

By Paul Turner – Senior Partner

It has always been time consuming to properly meet the compliance needs and duties under your Sponsorship License. With new rules introduced in January 2021 compliance will be tougher.

Any business who wants to employ migrant workers, now including EU nationals from 2021, must successfully secure a sponsorship license. We can secure this for you, but for the purpose of this short article we will presume your business has one already.

We are aware that many businesses, being so busy dealing with every day work that generates your revenue, simply does not have the time to navigate through the complex immigration rules, and policies, that are frequently changing and have time to properly document performance of your compliance duties under the Sponsorship license.

We provide bespoke specialist services for all our business and corporate clients whereby we manage entirely the compliance needs , or play a role to assist you to internally audit your processes to avoid any compliance breaches, depending on your particular set up and needs.

A number of problems commonly arise that breach sponsorship license duties such as;

– Failing to update change of details of a current or new Authorising Officer ‘AO’
– Failure to update changes of sponsors addresses
– Change of migrant workers addresses
– Failure to address change of ownership / restructure of company that may affect who is immediate owner of the sponsor license. For example a company take over can require a new sponsorship license
– Change to size of sponsor that can determine the fees payable to the UK
– Use of wrong SOC codes and failing to identify when a promotion of an employee may require a new resident labour market process
– Right to work checks
– Sponsor Management System (SMS) compliance. We would register our lawyers as Level 1 users to ensure it is actively managed
– Ensuring that HR files and records are up to date as these will need to be available should the Home Office make a site visit
– Document retention such as evidence of qualifications viewed before allocation Certificates of Sponsorship and resident market labour test process

It is important to ensure that the processes and records are maintained properly at the time. The Home Office can attend your offices unannounced. Breaches of duties can be costly in terms of time wasted correcting the faults and engaging with the Home Office. More seriously, fines can be imposed, or loss of the Sponsorship license that can reduce your work force and ability to engage in business. A Sponsorship license that is not properly maintained can amount to significant business interruption.

BHD provide a compliance pack for sponsors and a questionnaire that is sent to your Human Resources department on a quarterly basis to ensure complete compliance. We retain on your behalf copies of all the documentation required to show absolute compliance so should the Home Office contact you for a pre-arranged or unannounced audit, we will simply deal with this on your behalf. The cost of this service is competitive and well justified by saving time and disruption to your business so you can get on with what you do best.

Contact us today

For assistance and guidance with the above or if you would like to instruct one of our experts, contact us today for advice and assistance.

I can be emailed directly at paul.turner@bhdsolicitors if you wish to arrange a consultation, or you can alternatively contact us via the blue contact us boxes above.

We are a firm specialising in immigration law with offices situated in Croydon and Central London and we are continuing to work throughout the Coronavirus pandemic.