What is Sponsor Compliance?

The ability to sponsor foreign workers, on an appropriate immigration route, to work in the UK is a privilege that must be earned by a UK employer. When a UK-based organisation is granted a sponsor licence by the Home Office, significant trust is placed in them. With that trust, sponsors are also given a responsibility to act in accordance with the UK’s immigration law, all parts of the UK Worker and Temporary Worker sponsor guidance, wider UK law (such as employment law), and the UK's wider public good. 

It is UKVI’s (a division of the Home Office) duty to ensure all licensed sponsors discharge these responsibilities, and that the actions (or omissions) of a sponsor do not pose a risk to immigration control, or that their actions are not conducive to the public good.

Meeting a sponsor’s compliance duties requires the sponsor to have the knowledge of the rules, the resources, effort and commitment required they need to put in to ensure their organisation is compliant.

The Home Office has the legal powers to investigate employers whom it suspects have breached their responsibility to comply with sponsor’s duties. They can carry out checks to verify that sponsors have adequate HR systems in place to ensure compliance. Compliance checks can be in the form of digital audits or site inspections held with little to no notice.

Holding a valid sponsor licence opens up valuable recruitment opportunities for the employer, but employers must comply with ongoing responsibilities. The Home Office expects licence holders to maintain robust systems for record-keeping, monitoring each worker and reporting any changes regarding the sponsored employee or the sponsor’s organisation, alongside wider compliance with immigration and employment law. 

Where the Home Office alleges that a sponsor has failed to comply with their sponsor licence compliance duties, they can downgrade the sponsor’s licence rating, suspend, or revoke the licence. This will also put the jobs and immigration status of existing migrant workers at risk.

Therefore, each licensed sponsor must maintain compliance records, sponsor management, and be prepared for immigration audits.

Maintaining Compliance Records

A large part of the sponsor licence compliance duties involves keeping accurate records for each sponsored worker and temporary Worker for a required period of time. Appendix D of the Immigration Rules - Sponsor Guidance specifies the list of documents a sponsor must retain and how long they must keep them for. Records must be retained in paper or electronic format. They must be fully visible and provided on request. For eVisas (an electronic record of someone’s immigration status in the UK), records should reflect online status checks rather than any physical stamp.

Sponsors must keep the following documents;

• Evidence of the right to work for sponsored workers

• Evidence of recruitment for sponsored workers

• Evidence of salary for sponsored workers

• Evidence of skill level for sponsored workers

• Additional evidence for sponsored workers

Employers must also keep the documents used as part of their sponsor licence application and retain them for whichever is the shorter period:

• One year from the date an employer ends its sponsorship of a migrant worker.

• The date on which a compliance officer from the Home Office has examined and approved the documents, if this takes place less than one year after the end of the job sponsorship.

However, sponsors may be required to keep some documents for longer periods of time. 

Maintaining Sponsor Management

The SMS (Sponsor Management System) is an online portal provided by UKVI (UK Visas and Immigration) for employers with a sponsor licence. A sponsor licence holder should use the SMS to meet their requirements as an employer sponsoring Worker and Temporary Workers.

A sponsor can only use the SMS if they already have a valid sponsor licence as a UK employer hiring people on a UK Worker or Temporary Worker route. 

It enables sponsors to:

• Manage details of their sponsor licence, including the key personnel (authorising officer, Level 1 and 2 users, and others) and organisation information.

• Assigning a CoS (certificate of sponsorship) to the sponsored workers or temporary workers

• Report activities related to sponsored workers, such as changes in their employment, non-attendance, or withdrawal of sponsorship, to the UKVI.

• Report changes to their own circumstances, for example, a change of name of business, owner, or location.

• Renew licences and CoS allocations, ensuring uninterrupted migrant workers sponsorship capabilities. 

Sponsorship Management System is not just a tool but also a legal requirement for licence holders to maintain compliance with the UK's immigration rules. Failure to use this tool correctly can lead to severe consequences. Therefore, it is essential for sponsors to understand its functions thoroughly.

Immigration Audit

Compliance with the sponsor licence duties is an ongoing responsibility. To ensure this the Home Office does compliance monitoring of licensed sponsors. Monitoring now combines on-site inspections with digital immigration audits (a remote compliance check conducted by the Home Office), giving the Home Office a wider reach and shorter notice periods. The Home Office has powers to conduct announced and unannounced site inspections of UK sponsor licence holders, but it is now increasingly conducting desktop audits. 

An approved sponsor must be ready to demonstrate at any moment that their right to work checks, HR files, and reporting logs meet the standards in the immigration rule - sponsor guidance. Failure to cooperate, such as denying access to premises, withholding records, or missing digital-audit deadlines, allows the Home Office to move straight to the licence's suspension or revocation. Non-cooperation (e.g., denying the inspection team access to the premises, missing deadlines) leads directly to suspension or revocation.

On-site inspections 

Officers from the Home Office may arrive (announced or unannounced) at a sponsor’s premises for a compliance audit. If the Home Office attends a sponsor’s premises for an inspection, they are required to cooperate with the officers.

The inspectors will expect immediate access to any location where sponsored workers are based and will request original copies (paper or electronic) of the documents listed in Immigration Rules - Appendix D of the Sponsor Guidance. 

Digital desktop immigration audits 

The Home Office is increasingly relying on remote compliance checks. In this process, the Home Office sends and email to a sponsor asking them to upload specified evidence, typically within 5 or 10 working days, to a secure portal. Requests from the Home Office often cover a sample list of sponsored workers and ask for copies of their passports, visas, work contracts, payslips, recruitment advertisements, and their absence records.