Home Office Salary Enquiries for Sponsors: How to Respond

A request for information about sponsored workers’ pay is not a routine payroll query. It can be an early stage in Home Office compliance action and should be handled promptly, accurately and strategically.

Sponsors are increasingly receiving emails from the Home Office setting out:

We are looking into concerns that suggest your current sponsored workers may not be receiving a salary that matches the salary stated on their Certificate of Sponsorship.

As per Annex C1(aa) of the sponsor guidance where it states such circumstances where we will revoke your licence:

“You pay a sponsored worker less than you said you would on the worker’s CoS, and;

you have not notified us of the change in salary; or
the reduction is not otherwise permitted by the Immigration Rules or the Workers and Temporary Workers: guidance for sponsors”.

Although this may not be labelled a compliance visit or formal audit, it should be approached with similar care. As the Home Office notes in this email:

As per the published guidance, we reserve the right to revoke a licence where there is a serious or systematic breach of your sponsor duties.

This request could be random, but we have seen the Home Office target industries it considers high risk, such as care homes and hospitality.

The Home Office has access to HMRC data and can compare it against details provided on a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS). Therefore, it is increasingly easy to find discrepancies.

We explore what this means and what to do.

What This Means: A Compliance Visit in Disguise

When receiving this email, sponsors are often required to provide a bundle of documents including:

Contracts of employment for all sponsored staff;
Business bank statement(s) for all business accounts used by the organisation covering the last six months; and
Payslips for all sponsored workers for the last six months that demonstrate the hourly rate and hours worked.

This is not a friendly check-up but a review of compliance including whether:

Sponsored workers hold the same job titles and perform the same role as compared to the CoS, and indeed whether the role is ‘genuine’;
The salary payments match the salary set out to the Home Office and if there have been any underpayments;
The hourly rates are correct and do not reduce the pro-rata salary below the thresholds; and
The salary is paid at the correct periods.

The sponsor duties regarding salary are now complex and any reduction or variation of salary needs to be carefully considered. Even where a salary reduction or variation is permitted, failure to report it correctly may lead to enforcement action by the Home Office, as we have seen in 𝗥 (𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘀𝗵) 𝘃 𝗦𝗦𝗛𝗗

In the request, the Home Office are asking for information and documents which could potentially expose a breach of compliance duties and allow the Home Office to take action, including suspending or revoking the sponsor licence.

What to Do: Audit, Reply Carefully and Plan Ahead

This enquiry should be treated as a compliance review.

This means that you want to be sure that the information and documents provided to the Home Office demonstrate:

Compliance with the sponsor duties;
Internal consistency; and
Strong internal systems and processes.

You need to make sure you do not give the Home Office ammunition to use against you. All documents provided to them should be checked, compared with the Home Office requirements and compared to any information previously provided to the Home Office.

This is, in effect, a self-audit. There is normally a 20-working-day deadline to reply to the Home Office enquiry, so the audit needs to be quick as well as thorough.

If any breaches, or any weaknesses in compliance are identified, you may need to take legal advice regarding your next steps.

If you are satisfied with the audit, you need to ensure that the information provided matches any previous details given to the Home Office, either in CoS’, in reports or in a separate request. The Home Office often considers internal consistency as a marker for genuine sponsors that require sponsored workers and an organisation with strong monitoring systems.

Finally, there should be a review of the internal systems and processes, including monitoring, absences recording and right to work. Any strengths in these areas should be highlighted.

The reply to the Home Office should be carefully drafted. If there are weak documents being provided, there needs to be a strong explanation with evidence of any remedial action.

You must reply within the deadline. Organisations should treat this request with priority, as the Home Office can have a ‘light trigger’ in suspending or revoking licences.

If there is a risk of suspension or revocation, then organisations should plan ahead. This can include considering how the organisation will operate going forward without a sponsor licence.

How we can help

We have extensive experience assisting organisations facing licence suspensions and revocations, as well as responding to Home Office salary enquiries.

We can provide auditing assistance, review the documents to be prepared and provide advice on any potential weaknesses. We can also help strengthen future compliance processes and assist in drafting a robust response to the Home Office

For organisations concerned about such actions in the future, we can provide remote and on-site compliance reviews as well as sponsorship and right to work training.