If the Home Office finds breaches of the sponsor duties it can downgrade the licence to a B rating with an action plan, suspend it while it investigates, or revoke it. Revocation ends the sponsorship of every worker, whose leave is then curtailed, so the response to a suspension letter is the most important document the business will write.

Suspension

A suspension letter sets out the alleged breaches and gives the sponsor 20 working days to respond. During suspension you cannot assign new certificates, but existing workers keep their leave. The response must deal with each allegation with evidence: records that show the duty was met, or an honest explanation and the corrective steps taken. Generic assurances do not work.

Revocation

If the response does not satisfy the Home Office the licence is revoked. There is no right of appeal. The options are:

Judicial review, where the decision was procedurally unfair, ignored the evidence, applied the guidance wrongly or was disproportionate; see judicial review. The pre-action letter sometimes leads to reconsideration.
Reapplying after the cooling-off period, usually 12 months, with the problems fixed.

The workers

Sponsored workers are given 60 days (or the remainder of their leave if shorter) to find a new sponsor or another route, unless they were complicit in the breach. We advise the workers as well as the business where there is no conflict.

Prevention

Most revocations follow an audit that finds missing right-to-work records, unreported changes, salary below the certificate, or roles that are not what the certificate says. A compliance review before the Home Office visits is far cheaper than a response to a suspension letter.

What we do

We draft the response to the suspension letter, assemble the evidence, deal with the Home Office, bring judicial review where it is justified and manage the workers' positions.