Case Study - Inside a paper-based UKVI readiness review of a UK care-sector Skilled Worker sponsor and the seven themes that put a licence at risk.

At a glance

The client. A UK domiciliary care provider holding a Skilled Worker sponsor licence and employing a large, fast-growing workforce, including overseas staff on the Skilled Worker visa based across multiple locations. The provider asked us to run a mock sponsor compliance audit ahead of a possible UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) compliance visit. All identifying details including company name, licence number, payroll references and staff names have been removed from this case study.

What we did. We replicated the documentary review a Home Office compliance officer carries out on a visit, testing every worker file against the duties a licensed sponsor must meet: preventing illegal working, keeping accurate records, paying workers correctly and reporting changes on time. We reviewed 117 worker files in total, 6 sponsored workers and 111 non-sponsored and separately analysed 17 months of payroll covering more than 150 individuals.

What we found. No file was assessed as fully satisfactory. Right-to-work control was the single most pervasive risk: only around a quarter of checks were clearly carried out before the worker’s start date. We rated 50 of 117 files Red (act before the audit) and the rest Amber (verify or document), and surfaced seven systemic themes, from mis-filed sponsored workers to undocumented pay changes and a sponsorship-eligibility question. Any of which a real visit could turn into a licence problem.

Why it matters. For a sponsor, the civil penalty for illegal worker, up to £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for a repeat breach. The greater and more common risk is licence revocation, which curtails the visas of every sponsored worker and can stop a care business operating. A mock audit finds these gaps while there is still time to fix them.

Background: why sponsors run a mock audit

A Skilled Worker sponsor licence is a privilege that comes with continuing duties, duties that begin the moment a sponsor licence application is approved and are set out in the Home Office’s sponsor licence guidance. The Home Office can visit a sponsor at any time, announced or unannounced, and will inspect worker files, interview the Authorising Officer and key personnel, and often speak to workers themselves. Officers test the paperwork against a simple question: can the sponsor show, with dated evidence, that it ran the right checks at the right time and kept the records?

In the care sector the stakes are especially high. Sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa the route that replaced the former Tier 2 visa has expanded quickly, workforces are large and dispersed, and onboarding often happens under operational pressure, exactly the conditions in which compliance gaps accumulate quietly. A mock audit is a controlled rehearsal: it applies the same scrutiny UKVI would, but produces an action list instead of a penalty notice.

The engagement had two stages. First, the paper-based review documented here a file-by-file examination of the workforce records. Second, a mock interview stage, mirroring the conversations UKVI holds on a visit with the Authorising Officer, the Level 1 SMS user and a sample of workers. This case study covers the paper-based stage and its findings.

How we ran the review

We assessed each file against a structured documentation checklist covering the core sponsor duties, and gave every file a simple traffic-light rating so the client could triage remediation:

Rating	Meaning
RED	Act before the audit: a gap that could trigger a penalty or licence action if found on a visit.
AMBER	Verify or document: likely fine in substance, but the evidence on file is incomplete or undated.
GREEN	Satisfactory: compliant and fully evidenced.

Alongside the file reviews we built a payroll analysis from 17 months of payslips, comparing each sponsored worker’s actual pay against the salary promised on their Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), and tracing salary advances and unexplained deductions. The deliverables were an individual report for every worker, a sponsored-worker action log, a non-sponsored workforce risk register, a right-to-work tracker and a new-starter compliance procedure to stop the gaps recurring.

The headline result

Across the 117 files, the rating split was stark and no file was clean:

Population	Files	Red	Amber	Green
Sponsored workers	6	2	4	0
Non-sponsored workers	111	48	63	0
Total	117	50	67	0

The right-to-work picture was the clearest single warning. Cross-referencing start dates against the dated right-to-work checks on file, only about 27% of checks were demonstrably completed on or before the worker’s first day. The rest were either carried out after the start date, leaving the company with no statutory excuse for the intervening period or could not be found at all.

Right-to-work finding	Share of checks	Audit status
Check recorded on or before start date	~27%	Compliant
Check recorded after the start date	Largest group	No statutory excuse — high risk
Start date on record but no check found	A further large group	Possible breach — high risk

Among the late checks the median delay was around two weeks, but the tail was extreme the worst exceeded three years, suggesting that in some files a much later remediation check had been logged in place of the original. From a UKVI perspective, a missing or undated check is treated as no check at all.

Seven themes that put the licence at risk

Most individual findings traced back to seven recurring, systemic issues. These are the patterns any sponsor should test for in their own files.

1. Right-to-work checks, the dominant risk

The most serious and widespread issue. The recurring failure modes were:

•     No check of any kind on file for several non-EEA nationals meaning no statutory excuse and direct illegal-working exposure.

•     Checks carried out after the start date, ranging from days to many months, leaving a gap in the statutory excuse.

•     Manual checks with only a passport or ID copy and no contemporaneous, dated record of when the check was actually made, common for British and settled staff, and exactly what fails on a visit.

•     Time-limited visas with no follow-up check diarised, and student-visa holders with no term-date evidence to verify the term-time hours cap.

2. Sponsored workers mis-filed as non-sponsored

Around eighteen to twenty files appeared to belong to Skilled Worker visa holders, some sponsored by the client, some doing supplementary work for another sponsor, yet were filed among the non-sponsored staff, often with no record of the sponsoring relationship or its conditions. Mis-filing like this hides reporting duties and supplementary-employment limits, and is easily exposed when an officer cross-checks against the Sponsorship Management System (SMS).

3. Payroll, unexplained deductions and undocumented pay changes

Unlabelled deductions recurred on many payslips, some substantial and cumulative, with no written explanation of what they were for raising both unlawful-deduction and National Living Wage questions. Pay rises, including the April uplift, frequently appeared on payslips with no signed pay-variation letter on file. For sponsored workers, pay drifting below the CoS rate is itself a reportable compliance issue.

4. Data accuracy, GDPR and identity

Third-party documents were filed in the wrong worker’s folder in numerous cases a personal-data breach pattern under UK GDPR. More seriously, the same passport number appeared against two different workers, which needs urgent investigation as either an administrative error or potential identity fraud. Several unreconciled name changes and the retention of full bank statements as proof of address rounded out the data-handling concerns.

5. Contracts and core records

Written statements of main terms were frequently signed well after the first day contrary to the day-one requirement in the Employment Rights Act 1996 and some files had no signed contract at all. Missing payslips and P60s were common, and the file checklist was left blank in most folders, so there was no internal record that the checks had ever been done.

6. Pay that clears the hourly rate but not the monthly CoS salary

A subtler payroll risk emerged for staff on variable shift patterns. In several months a worker’s pay fell below the monthly salary stated on their Certificate of Sponsorship even though the hourly rate paid was correct. This was due to contracted hours had not been rostered, or a paid item such as a mandatory staff meeting had been missed, through a rota-scheduling error. Because CoS salary compliance is tested against the monthly figure, not just the hourly rate, an under-rostered month reads as an underpayment on the sponsor’s own records. Any sponsor with a rota-based or variable-hours workforce needs a monthly check that each sponsored worker’s actual pay still clears the CoS salary, and a mechanism to correct and back-pay any shortfall promptly.

7. Licence housekeeping, SMS users, reporting and work locations

Finally, several ‘running the licence’ basics were out of order, the kind of housekeeping a compliance officer checks quickly and expects to be right:

•     Key personnel on a generic inbox. A Level 1 user was registered on the Sponsorship Management System (SMS) with a generic organisational address (for example an ‘info@’ inbox) rather than a named, personal email. The guidance requires key personnel to use a personal email address so the Home Office is corresponding with an identifiable individual, not a shared mailbox.

•     Changes reported late. ‘Stopped sponsoring’ notifications were filed outside the 10-working-day deadline after employment ended, in this case because an internal disciplinary appeal was still running. The reporting clock runs regardless of internal processes, so an interim change-of-circumstances report should be filed to preserve compliance while an appeal is live.

•     Workers at unregistered locations. Sponsored workers were based at sites that had not been added to the licence as branches. Owning and controlling the site is not enough; each working location must be recorded on the licence before a worker is assigned there.

Spotlight: what the payroll analysis added

File reviews alone do not reveal pay problems. By rebuilding 17 months of payroll we could test each sponsored worker’s actual pay against their CoS commitment, month by month, and surface a pattern of salary advances that no one had reconciled:

•     Salary advances ('early payments'). Twenty-two staff received advances totalling roughly £13,500 across 46 payments in a six-month window, later recovered through payslip deductions. Three of the recipients were sponsored workers meaning their pay in the relevant month had to be checked to confirm it still met the CoS rate once the advance was accounted for.

•     Below-rate months. Several sponsored workers showed individual months, or running averages, below their CoS salary each a potential reporting trigger and a back-pay question.

•     Reconciliation risk. Advances and unexplained deductions on the same payslips made it hard to prove, from the records alone, that each sponsored worker had been paid correctly, which is precisely what UKVI tests.

What the Home Office would do and the cost to the business

Findings like these are not filed away. If a real UKVI compliance visit uncovered the same gaps, particularly the right-to-work failures, which point to illegal working, the Home Office has a ladder of enforcement action open to it, and for a licensed sponsor each rung carries serious operational and financial consequences.

Enforcement outcome	What it involves	Effect on the business
Downgrade to a B-rating	For less serious breaches, the licence is downgraded from A to B and the sponsor is placed on a time-limited action plan (usually three months) with a fee (£1,579 in 2025) payable within 10 working days.	While B-rated, the sponsor cannot assign Certificates of Sponsorship to new workers. Failing to complete the action plan normally leads to revocation.
Suspension	For more serious concerns, the licence is suspended while UKVI investigates. The sponsor is given the reasons and a chance to respond.	No new workers can be sponsored during the suspension, freezing recruitment while the business is under investigation.
Revocation	The most serious outcome — and, where illegal working is established, the usual one. It takes effect immediately, there is no right of appeal, and the only challenge is judicial review.	The licence is lost from the date of the notice. The business cannot sponsor anyone and is removed from the public register of licensed sponsors.

The knock-on effects of revocation are severe. The visas of existing sponsored workers are curtailed, typically leaving them around 60 days to find a new sponsor or leave the UK, so a care provider can lose a large part of its workforce almost overnight. On top of that come civil penalties for illegal working of up to £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for a repeat breach, potential criminal liability for knowingly employing someone without the right to work (up to five years’ imprisonment) and possible director disqualification. The business is then barred from reapplying for a sponsor licence for at least 12 months and longer where penalties or convictions are involved so overseas recruitment stops for a year or more.

The wider damage is commercial as much as legal: remediation and legal costs, back-pay, lost contracts, and reputational harm with staff, commissioners, local authorities, regulators and clients. For a care business, losing frontline staff also threatens service continuity and can draw the attention of the sector regulator.

This is not a remote risk. Enforcement against care-sector sponsors has escalated sharply: in the year to June 2025 the number of revoked sponsor licences more than doubled, from 937 to 1,948, affecting an estimated 34,000 workers. That is exactly why finding and fixing these gaps in a mock audit, before a real visit, is so valuable: every consequence above is avoidable while the issue is still an internal finding.

What we recommended

The client received a prioritised action plan. The before-the-audit priorities were:

1.     Right-to-work remediation first. For every Red file with no valid statutory excuse, run an immediate Home Office online or manual check, use the Employer Checking Service where status is unclear or expired, and stop work where there is no lawful basis, prioritising anyone with no check on file or expired leave.

2.     Reconcile the mis-filed sponsored workers against the SMS, confirming who is sponsored, who is doing supplementary work, and documenting the conditions.

3.     Identify and justify every unexplained deduction in writing, confirm none is unlawful or below the minimum wage, and back-pay where required.

4.     Investigate the duplicated passport number, re-file every misplaced document, and log the data-protection incidents.

5.     Within one to two weeks: diarise all follow-up right-to-work dates, obtain signed contracts and pay-variation letters, and complete the file checklist for every worker.

6.     Check monthly pay against the CoS salary for every sponsored worker, not just the hourly rate, and especially where hours are rota-based, and put the SMS in order: named personal emails for key personnel, every work location added as a branch, and all changes reported within the deadline (with an interim report filed if a disciplinary appeal is still live).

Building the fix in. To stop the gaps recurring, we delivered a single new-starter compliance procedure with a short list of non-negotiables including a dated right-to-work check before day one for everyone, no start until permission to work is confirmed, a signed contract on or before day one, evidence retained for the required period, and one named owner with diarised follow-up dates for every step.

Lessons for any sponsor

•     The date of the check is the whole game. A right-to-work check that is real but undated, or done after day one, gives no statutory excuse. Record the date you checked, every time, for everyone.

•     Your records must match the SMS. Sponsored workers hiding in the non-sponsored files is a classic visit finding. Reconcile the two regularly.

•     Payroll is a compliance record, not just an HR one. Unexplained deductions and undocumented pay rises read as red flags. For sponsored staff, pay has to demonstrably meet the CoS rate.

•     Eligibility can outrank paperwork. A sound file is worthless if the underlying basis for sponsoring the role is wrong. Check the eligibility rules for your occupation codes before issuing a Certificate of Sponsorship.

•     Meeting the hourly rate is not the same as meeting the CoS salary. For workers on variable shifts, an under-rostered month can drop pay below the monthly figure UKVI tests against — check it every month and back-pay quickly.

•     Find it before UKVI does. Every issue above was fixable while it was still a mock-audit finding. The same issue found on a real visit can cost a penalty or the licence.

About UK Immigration Pathways

UK Immigration Pathways advises sponsor licence holders across the full Skilled Worker route, from the sponsor licence application and the Home Office sponsor licence guidance, through assigning each Certificate of Sponsorship, to Skilled Worker visa and Skilled Worker dependent visa applications, alongside ongoing compliance, mock audits and UKVI visit readiness. Whether you are preparing a sponsor licence application, weighing up sponsor licence fees and certificate of sponsorship costs, or would like a confidential review of your own sponsor files before the Home Office does it for you, we would be glad to help.

www.ukimmigrationpathways.co.uk

This case study is anonymised and provided for general information about sponsor compliance. It is not legal advice on any individual case, and figures relating to penalties, wage rates and immigration rules were correct at the time of the review and change frequently.