Sponsor licence compliance visits

A compliance officer tests whether what you told the Home Office matches what actually happens at work. They can come to any address where your sponsored workers do their jobs, including a client's premises, or hold the check as a video interview, which the guidance calls a digital compliance check (sponsor guidance).

You must let officers into any site you control on demand. If your workers are based at a third party's office, that business needs to know an unannounced visit can happen there and must co-operate. Officers carry official Home Office identification, and you can confirm a visit is genuine by calling 0300 123 4699.

Refusing or delaying a check counts against you in its own right: it is on the list of reasons the Home Office will normally revoke a licence.

The visit checks that each sponsored job is real and matches its certificate of sponsorship (CoS), the electronic record you assign to every sponsored worker. Officers may:

• go through the HR file for each sponsored worker, measured against the record-keeping list in Appendix D
• look at your right to work checks, for sponsored staff and for everyone else
• compare the job each worker does, where they do it and what they are paid with the details on their CoS
• interview sponsored workers, people you sponsored in the past, and the staff who recruited them
• photograph the premises and test what you said in your licence application
• run criminal record and civil penalty checks on owners, directors and key personnel

Salary is also checked away from the visit, through regular data checks with HMRC.

A pre-licence visit checks that you could meet the duties before you take them on. The Home Office uses it to judge whether your HR systems are fit for sponsorship and whether the roles you plan to fill are genuine (sponsor guidance, Part 1).

GOV.UK says most applications are decided in under 8 weeks and that UKVI may need to visit your business along the way (GOV.UK). Not helping with a check at this stage is a listed reason for refusal, covered on the licence refused page.

Being ready means you can show, on any working day, that your records and your workers' real jobs line up. Steps employers take include:

• Keep one file per sponsored worker holding their CoS details, right to work check, contact details and attendance record.
• Compare each worker's duties, hours, work address and pay with their CoS, and report any change through the sponsor management system.
• Brief your authorising officer, key contact and level 1 users on their roles, since officers may question them.
• Let sponsored workers know a visit can happen and that officers may ask them about their job and pay.
• Warn any client site where your workers are placed that officers may arrive without notice.

The full set of reporting deadlines is on the sponsor duties page.

You get the outcome in a letter, because the officer gives no view of how it went during the visit. Where a breach is relatively minor and you are willing and able to fix it, the usual step is a B-rating with a time-limited action plan. A serious or systematic failing can lead to suspension or revocation, and the Home Office can take either step without downgrading you first.