A UK based company or organization that wants to employ a foreign worker in their company must apply for a sponsor licence first. From the day you are granted a sponsor license, you need to fulfil the duties as per UK immigration rules. You need to meet these compliance duties until you surrender your license or your license lapses, or the Home Office revokes your sponsor license.

Sponsor license compliance duties

Record keeping

Record keeping is one of the compliance duties a sponsor needs to fulfil. Record keeping means you need to check and retain specific documents for specific periods in required formats (paper or electronic). You need to maintain two types of documents:
a. documents provided as part of your sponsor license application
b. documents for each foreign worker employed for your business.
All documents that you submitted as part of your application must be maintained for the duration of the period covered by your license.

All documents related to sponsored workers must be kept for either
(a) One year from the date of the end of the sponsorship of the sponsored worker by you
OR
(b) The time when a compliance officer has examined and approved documents in case the migrant is no longer sponsored by you.

What needs to be maintained

• Copy of passports for all employees with copies of all passport pages;
• Copy of UK Biometric Card or UK Visa confirming permission to work;
• Copy of National Insurance Number;
• A history of employee’s contact details (address, telephone number, mobile telephone number)
• Record of employee’s absences (this may be kept manually or electronically) – You may need to explain how do the employees book their holiday
• Copy of any contract of/for employment/service between company and employee (indicating start date and end dates, details of job or work, hours, salary and name and signatures of the parties)
• Copy of qualifications and experience relevant to employee’s post or relevant accreditation;
• Copies of payslips showing NI number, Tax codes, any allowances and deductions made
• Copy of Payslips, P60 and P45
• Evidence of the amount and frequency of all salary payments made to each migrant, showing the transfer of each payment into the named migrant’s bank account or onto their pre-paid card, for example a FOREX card. (the employer can keep the bank statement copies to show payments have been made to employees)
• If an employee is receiving help in terms of accommodation or housing from the employer you must have evidence from the owner or letting agent for the property concerned which clearly states the value of the rent payable by you on the property;
• ATAS Certificate where applicable – these are for jobs like technology or arms and ammunition or weapons of mass destruction or where the person has Government sponsorship for their education in the UK.
• Copy of any advertisement placed by the company – If the vacancy need to be advertised on Job Centre Plus and any relevant website/national newspaper – please keep all the details including the dates, website, job description, job reference number, salary and closing date of the job;
• Evidence of how you recruited the individual – please keep details of the recruitment process;
• Copies of all the CV’s received, shortlisted, and interview providing details i.e. name, address, etc (including reasons for rejecting British National or settled worker)

Keeping key personnel
Keeping key personnel is another key compliance duty of a sponsor. Licensed sponsors must appoint individuals as
Authorising officer
key contact officer
Level 1 user
These key roles can be held by existing people in the organization. If you hire external agents, the rules apply to them as well.
The names of appointed personnel are to be mentioned in the application of sponsor license, and also, their details need to be kept up to date on the SMS.
There must be an authorising officer and at least one Level 1 user during the entire period of sponsor license. If any of the key personnel leaves the organisation, he/she must be replaced. Otherwise, sponsor license may face the consequence of downgrading of license by the UKVI.