20 days is not enough to correct sponsor duties breached in the last 20 months

On 14 November 2023, we received a call from a domiciliary care provider after they received a letter from the Home Office suspending their sponsor licence. The business had an unannounced visit from two compliance officers three months earlier.

Under the sponsor's guidance, the business has 20 working days from the date of the letter to make representations, including submitting evidence to respond to why the Home Office took such action. If the concerns identified during the compliance visit are not adequately addressed, sponsor licence revocation is the next step in the process.

The thought of having a deadline to submit representation is stressful enough for the care provider, but the real prospect of closing down the care service on revocation of the licence is more concerning when someone goes through this time.

For context, this domiciliary care provider delivers 2,500 hours of care packages to its community, and all its carers are from overseas. In other words, it is impossible to provide care to their service users if they lose the right to keep employing these sponsored workers because of a revocation action by the Home Office.

So we committed to helping the business. I spent three hours trying to understand all the recruitment and HR activities undertaken by the client and why the compliance officers found them to have breached their sponsor duties. But the reality is this -

It takes a lot longer than 20 working days to correct mistakes committed knowingly or unknowingly by the sponsor in the last 20 months or more.

I had to free up my time to accommodate the required time and effort to prepare and respond in full to the Home Office on behalf of the client. Luckily, we were able to submit the representations two days before the given deadline. 

I will share the reasons for the suspension in my next blog. I'm keen to know the outcome of our representations and will share it as soon as we hear back from the Home Office. 

If you want to know whether you are complying with your sponsor's duties or not, go here to get an audit.