UK Immigration audits and compliance

What is an immigration audit?

An immigration audit is, in effect, a comprehensive review of all the aspects of an organisation’s operations where the organisation in question is required to comply with UK immigration law and Home Office requirements.

Here at Cranbrook Legal, we recognise that in the day-to-day running of your business, you are likely to be extremely busy, and there might be a risk of some aspects of your organisation’s operations not being in compliance with Home Office requirements.

However, you will not want any such areas of non-compliance to only become known for the first time when the Home Office’s inspectors arrive at your premises.

This is where a thorough immigration audit and compliance service will more than prove its worth. It will help you to identify and resolve any elements of non-compliance, to help ensure that when Home Office inspectors visit your site, they will not see any breaches of their requirements, or reason to impose a penalty on your organisation.

Why does my company need an immigration audit?

The short answer to this question is: your organisation needs an immigration audit because you will not want to have to face the consequences of any aspect of your company’s operations being non-compliant with the UK immigration rules.

The Home Office takes matters of compliance extremely seriously, which is reflected in the punitive action it routinely takes against non-compliant businesses.

When your organisation in the UK applies for a sponsor licence – as it will need to do in order to employ almost anyone from outside the UK – it will need to agree to comply with certain sponsorship licence duties.

Your responsibilities as a sponsor will include:

• Checking that your foreign workers possess the required skills, qualifications, or professional accreditations in order to do their jobs; you will also need to keep copies of documents that show this
• Only assigning certificates of sponsorship (CoS) to workers when the job that they are to be employed in is actually suitable for sponsorship
• Letting UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) know if your sponsored workers are failing to comply with their visa conditions.

If your organisation does not fulfil these responsibilities in its capacity as a sponsor, you could be at serious risk of having your sponsor licence downgraded, suspended, or withdrawn. This, in turn, could impact on the visas of your sponsored employees, including their right to work for your company.

There are things other than the above that you will need to be mindful of, when you are seeking to ensure the compliance with UK immigration rules that will be essential to your organisation’s ability to keep hold of its sponsor licence.

You will need, for example, to ensure you have suitable and effective HR systems in place at your organisation for such processes as the monitoring of your workers’ immigration status, tracking and recording your sponsored employees’ attendance, and reporting any problems to UKVI – such as if your employee ceases to come to work.

It is also crucial to report any significant changes in your company’s circumstances to the Home Office within 20 working days – for example, if your firm stops trading or becomes insolvent, or if you substantially change the nature of your business.

Can be you absolutely sure that your organisation is in compliance with all the above, and other requirements related to the management of its sponsor licence and sponsored employees?

For many companies, the answer to that question would be “no”. A comprehensive immigration audit, then, carried out by a reputable firm with in-depth expertise in UK immigration law such as Cranbrook Legal, could therefore be an extremely wise investment.

At the very least, it will help give you the utmost peace of mind. In addition, it can help save you from serious penalties that could negatively affect your organisation’s ability to employ workers from overseas, and even damage your brand’s reputation.

Putting aside concerns about responsibilities specifically related to the sponsor licence, it is worth bearing in mind that all UK employers are required to comply with duties under the Home Office’s regime for preventing illegal working.

In the event of your business breaching any of these duties that are designed to prevent anyone who does not have the legal right to work in the UK from doing so, your firm could be at risk of civil penalties, and perhaps even criminal sanctions.

Ensuring that your organisation complies with requirements in this area – including keeping evidence on file of your employees’ right to work in the UK – is a further benefit of arranging routine immigration audits by a company like Cranbrook Legal.

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Why does the Home Office carry out an immigration audit?

The Home Office does not grant sponsor licences to employers out of pure altruism; it does so in the expectation that organisations acting as sponsors will comply with the requirements and duties to which they have agreed. Such requirements help ensure the UK’s sponsor licence system is working as it should, and that migrants are only working in the UK if they have the legal right to do so.

On-site Home Office immigration audits may therefore be carried out, in order to ensure the following:

• The organisation applying for a sponsor licence – or for the renewal of an existing sponsor licence – has provided complete and accurate information in its application
• The business seeking a sponsor licence or renewal is genuinely trading or operating lawfully in the UK
• The organisation has a genuine need for a sponsor licence
• The company is able to offer work to eligible migrants at the appropriate skill and payment level
• The company is committed to, and complies with, all sponsorship duties as set out by the Home Office.

Home Office visits to sponsor licence holders’ premises can sometimes be pre-arranged. However, you should never plan your organisation’s compliance efforts on the basis that you will have any advance notice enabling you to prepare for the audit ahead of time.

After all, much of the point of the Home Office carrying out on-site visits is the need to verify that the organisation has been in continuous compliance with its sponsor licence duties, instead of only fulfilling all the requirements when it knows a Home Office inspector is set to visit.

This is a further reason why your organisation should take a proactive approach, by getting in touch with Cranbrook Legal for help with the immigration audit and compliance process.

You can do so by calling us on 0208 215 0053, or by filling in and submitting our online contact form to request a free consultation.

How can we help you with your immigration audit?

You might be wondering what specific expertise our team at Cranbrook Legal has in relation to Home Office immigration audits. The short answer to this question is that we have exceedingly far-reaching and in-depth expertise with regard to all aspects of UK immigration law, including what the Home Office will be looking for when it visits your site to scrutinise your organisation’s compliance.

This means that you can have absolute confidence in our professional and friendly immigration solicitors carrying out an exacting assessment of every relevant aspect of your organisation’s operations.

To give some more specific examples, an immigration audit by us can assess such elements of your company’s operations as the following:

• The systems and processes you have in place for checking ‘right to work’ documents. Do you know which documents Home Office officials will want to see when they visit your premises, and do you have those documents easily to hand? Do you know when such documents need to be checked, and how copies should be annotated and stored? Our team at Cranbrook Legal can help with all these aspects
• The processes your organisation has for avoiding discrimination, while still being in compliance with the requirements for preventing illegal working in the UK
• The systems you have in place for checking your company’s compliance with sponsorship requirements. This includes the need to comply with certain minimum skill levels and salary levels
• The systems you have in place to ensure you let the Home Office know about any significant events, such as those related to your sponsored workers’ employment and circumstances, as well as certain changes that might be made to your business
• Any other systems you have in place in relation to immigration requirements, such as those stipulating how many hours a given visa holder is permitted to work.

Our work to help your company with immigration audits can also include – where appropriate – supplying sample documentation, and advising on changes that your firm might make to optimise systems and processes like those set out above.

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