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We acted for a global creative sector organisation which wanted to expand its overseas operations into the UK as part of a growth strategy. A Sponsor Licence was necessary for sponsoring two identified members of senior staff to the UK to expand operations into a world-class location for their sector. Although all Sponsor Licence applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis, there are core criteria which must be met and assessed objectively by the Home Office. During this application, we had to overcome numerous unforeseen challenges to secure the Sponsor Licence including when those standards were not met by the Home Office.
The challenges we faced included:
1. The only person in the UK was a Director of the limited company but they were not an employee of the company and had very little oversight of the company as a whole. They were the only person who could act as Authorising Officer on the Sponsor Licence, a mandatory role.
2. Evidencing that the UK entity was an actively trading company, despite the lack of personnel and direct client agreements or contracts.
3. Convincing the Home Office that the company should be allowed to sponsor two workers to be in the UK when their current jobs overseas were performed entirely remotely and there was no significant time zone obstacle.
4. Responding to unusually high levels of Home Office compliance checks during the application phase, including an additional remote audit during which incorrect criteria were investigated.
5. An error in decision-making meaning the full Sponsor Licence applied for was not granted.
In order to overcome these challenges, our work involved:
1. Full assessment of the Director’s involvement in the UK company’s operations, including knowledge of and access to the bank account and trading relationships. Advice on restructuring and increasing the Director’s role, inter alia, to be involved in day-to-day HR processes, in order to meet the requirements of an Authorising Officer.
2. Provided full Sponsor Licence compliance training to the Director as well as counterparts in the overseas Head Office, reviewing HR processes and making adaptations to ensure compliance best practice, and provision of bespoke process documents.
3. Research and investigations into the UK and overseas trading histories to understand the global nature of the company’s work, identifying credible documents to evidence the arrangements and contracts in place, and preparing strong representations in clear language to present the evidence to the Home Office.
4. Developing a strong understanding of the business, its operations globally, and how its staff interact with one another together with supporting on the preparation of a UK business plan to demonstrate the need for the two workers to be physically present in the UK.
5. Ensuring that the information and documentation that the Home Office would request during compliance checks were already prepared and the client trained on what to expect during audits, in order to minimise delays and risks of refusal.
6. Attendance during the Home Office audit in order to identify issues and be able to address inconsistencies post-audit, or answer questions when permitted by the Compliance Officer.
7. Strategic communication with Home Office officials throughout the compliance check and audit process, including when significant documents relating to the overseas business were incorrectly requested, and subsequently challenging decision-making errors.
Despite the challenges faced from unforeseeable and erroneous Home Office decision-making and excessive compliance and audit checks, we ultimately were successful in having the full Sponsor Licence granted with allocation to sponsor the two workers in the UK.
We worked tirelessly to represent our client with the Home Office, ensuring that the appropriate and correct facts were recognised whilst remaining cooperative and facilitating a trusted relationship for the eventual Sponsor Licence holder. Our approach of working closely with the business to understand its operations enabled us to maintain a critical view of the Home Office’s decisions which served to support our client and alleviate some of the concerns the errors caused. The company is now able to pursue its growth strategy and improve its global position within its sector through access to world-class staff in the UK.
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Partner & Head of Business Immigration
Victoria is a Partner and our Head of Business Immigration at Taylor Rose. She has over 13-years’ experience within her field from a 23 year career to date. She has previously established a successful immigration department in another City law firm and...
