Sponsorship Audit Reports by UK Immigration Lawyers

Our UK Immigration Lawyers have received different types of reception when attending business premises to carry out sponsor licence audits. They range from being made to feel very welcome to people displaying the sort of fear that we suspect a Care Quality Commission or OFSTED inspection instils in care home workers or teachers.

In this blog, our London Immigration Solicitors explain what goes into one of our sponsor licence audit reports and why audits by lawyers should be a constructive experience. Audits are not about criticism of what your business is doing but about offering guidance on how to secure or retain your licence so you can sponsor employees.

UK Online and London-Based Immigration Lawyers and Sponsorship Licence Solicitors  

For help with sponsor applications and management call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.  

Sponsor licence audits

When a company asks our business immigration team to conduct an audit, we go in with an open mind. However, we do like to know why the company has asked us to audit them. We get many different answers:

• Getting ready to make a first sponsor licence application
• Doing business in a high-risk sector where Home Office compliance visits are on the rise. For example, care homes and nursing homes
• Key personnel have left the business
• Planning to ask OTS Solicitors to provide a Sponsor Licence Management Service but want to test our UK Immigration Lawyers out first
• Know they are not coping with Home Office compliance rules and need to know ‘how bad it is’
• Think their systems are spot on, but recognise that if their licence is downgraded, the business would fold as they are so reliant on Skilled Worker Visa or Health and Care Worker Visa employees and unable to recruit sufficient UK or settled workers if they were to lose their licence
• Have a forthcoming Home Office announced audit and are worried about what the Home Office auditors might say

Sponsor licence audits by Immigration Lawyers

We can't say how all immigration law firms carry out audits, but if we are asked to conduct an audit, the procedure is as follows:

1. Agree on the scope of the audit and the terms
2. Audit
3. Audit report
4. Follow up

The timescales for these four steps depend on the needs of your business. If you have a Home Office announced audit in six weeks, we need to conduct your audit quickly.  If you need an audit for different reasons, we may ask for advance material from you so we can ensure you get the best out of the audit experience.

With a full audit, you can expect our Sponsorship Lawyers to not just look at your paperwork. Whilst lawyers, including Immigration Solicitors, like nothing better than studying documents, an audit that only looks at form filling won't be comprehensive. Auditors should talk to a variety of people, such as business owners, HR staff, key personnel and some sponsored employees. Talking also replicates what an actual Home Office audit would be like, as Home Office officials will interview key personnel and visa holders.

Our audit report details our findings, including the good and the not-so-good. Any follow-up work is then down to you. It could involve:

• Our team preparing your first sponsor licence application
• Immigration Law Training on the specific areas highlighted in our audit report
• Discussion about Sponsor Licence Management Service provision through a fixed monthly retainer
• Assisting your key personnel with an action plan to get your licence upgraded to an A rating
• Booking a further audit in 12 months
• No further action

What we do after an audit is down to you. It is your confidential audit report to do with as you wish.

What happens at a sponsor licence audit by UK Immigration Lawyers

Our London Immigration Solicitors are very conscious that whilst we are experts in business immigration and employment law, you and your key personnel are the people doing the job of managing your sponsor licence in a way that works for your company.  Therefore, we won't recommend change for the sake of change but will highlight if there are potential areas of non-compliance or partial compliance with the Home Office rules and best practice options to hopefully avoid the refusal of a sponsor licence application or an existing licence being downgraded, suspended or revoked.

During the audit, our lawyers will look at:

1. Ownership structure
2. Licence scope, such as the sponsorship of Skilled Worker Visa holders
3. Any governing body, such as Care Inspectorate Wales, if your business operates care homes in Wales
4. Number of employees and number of sponsored workers
5. Assessment of compliance with reporting and recording duties
6. Assessment of obligation to verify documents and retain records
7. Ability to find and locate key documents on HR files
8. Any documents showing the fair recruitment process and their retention
9. Offer letters to employees who require a visa and sponsorship
10. Proper conduct of right-to-work checks and record keeping
11. Strength of the systems for conducting repeat right-to-work checks
12. Employee absence records and the sponsor management system
13. Recording and maintaining sponsored employees’ personal information
14. Onboarding process for Skilled Worker Visa and Health and Care Worker Visa holders
15. Allocation of certificates of sponsorship
16. Review of certificates of sponsorship where employees change job roles
17. Storage systems and best practice
18. Ensuring key personnel details remain up to date
19. Systems to review salaries to ensure wages are compliant with visa requirements
20. Process to review corporate governance and report changes

We have limited the above list to a snapshot of 20 items, but in each business, the audit process is bespoke and thorough.

Sponsor licence audit reports

After OTS Solicitors have departed your business premises, the audit visit is followed up with a report summarising our findings and highlighting action points.

The audit report won't guarantee that your sponsor licence application will be successful or that you will sail through your announced audit visit with Home Office officials. No Immigration Lawyers audit can do that. The report will emphasise the areas the business needs to address and then it is up to the company to decide if they want our further professional help, such as with Immigration Law Training or Sponsor Licence Management Service.

When we, as an immigration law firm, make audit recommendations, we are always conscious of the cost to your organisation of additional administrative work balanced against the importance of having systems in place that are fully compliant with Home Office rules.

Our reports always focus on the key issues and the practical points. For example, if you have invested thousands in the latest software, it is our job to let you know if in real life the systems are not being followed or something minor, but critical to the Home Office, has been forgotten or hasn’t been updated.

Sponsorship Licence Lawyer Hans Sok Appadu welcomes discussions about how our audit process can help your business secure or retain its licence.

UK Online and London-Based Immigration Solicitors and Sponsorship Licence Lawyers

For sponsorship audits and management in the UK, call OTS Solicitors on 0203 959 9123 or contact us online.

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