Lawyers has warned social care businesses to tighten their overseas recruitment procedures to prevent losing their Skilled Worker Sponsor Licences

A freedom of information request RWK Goodman to the Home Office revealed that from 1 January 2021 and 26 October 2023, 94 private care providers in the health and social care sector had their Skilled Worker Sponsor Licences revoked.

James Sage, a partner in the health and social care team at RWK Goodman said: “While some of these providers may well have breached the rules around sponsor licences unintentionally, the consequences will be far-reaching. Not only will these providers have been forced to dismiss all the overseas workers they were sponsoring, their businesses will have faced fines and considerable reputational damage.”

RWK said that common pitfalls whereby providers are often found to be non-compliant are:

1. Failure to report changes to sponsored workers (within 10 working days). Examples include where the employee doesn’t start the role within 28 days, and failure to report when a pre-registered nurse completes his or her NMC registration or fails to complete it within eight months.

2.  Failure to report changes to organisations (within 20 working days), such as a change in status of any registration or accreditation providers are legally required to hold, for example, with the Care Quality Commission. 

3. Failure to keep compliant records, for example, a copy of the right to work check or DBS check, salary and skill level documents such as copies of any required qualifications, for example, for senior care workers and proof of registration (such as with the NMC).

4. Failure to conduct right to work checks properly and omitting to diarise follow up checks when visas expire.

5. Failure to understand minimum salary requirements in the context of overall salary and hourly rates, and that shift premiums are prohibited.  

6. Failure to comply with immigration law and extensive compliance duties generally. This includes recruiting the right candidates and assigning the correct occupation code to the role, specifically failing to issue a new certificate of sponsorship (COS) when a care worker is promoted to senior care worker and applying for change of employment. Also, only allowing the worker to undertake the role permitted by their visa and failure to disclose if you assign a COS to a family member of anyone within the organisation.