Immigration Compliance Training

Right to work elearning 

Our online right to work e-learning course allows employers to roll out compliance training across the organisation, to ensure all workers involved in recruitment and onboarding have the knowledge and awareness of their right to work obligations, in particular when hiring new workers. 

The course is available online and accessible at a time convenient for workers to complete. Once successfully completed, the organisation can retain digital proof of the training for each worker. 

Level 1 & Level 2 SMS user training 

Licensed sponsors are under strict legal obligations to meet their compliance duties, or face enforcement action.

A significant part of the compliance burden falls on the company’s level 1 & level 2 SMS users, who have to know how to use the Sponsorship Management System (SMS) to discharge their company’s compliance duties.

As a level 1 or level 2 SMS user, you are probably heavily involved in your company’s day-to-day immigration work, but this doesn’t make the system any more intuitive or user-friendly.

The Sponsorship Management System is notoriously difficult to use, and the Home Office’s SMS user guidance is just as complicated.

Many companies also have only a small number of sponsored workers, so when you do need to log onto the system, you may not be sure how to use it.

With no one to ask for help, level 1 and 2 users are often left worried about making a mistake and exposing their company to compliance penalties.

Our SMS Level 1 & Level 2 User training course is designed to give you the knowledge and confidence to use the Sponsorship Management System correctly and efficiently.

During this highly practical and interactive session, our immigration experts will provide step-by-step guidance, including: 

• Insight into the Sponsor Management System and its main functions
• Checking the number of COS you have allocated
• How to draft and submit an application in the SMS system for more COS allocations
• How to review and change key personnel
• How to review and change business / company information
• Understanding how use the SMS to meet your compliance obligations
• Understanding how to carry out your reporting duties
• How to terminate employee sponsorship
• How to apply to renew your PBS Licence
• Train you on how to engage with UKVI and what documentation is to be sent to the Home Office following submissions on the SMS

You will come away with a thorough understanding of how to navigate the SMS and how to use the system to meet your company’s compliance duties. 

Sessions have limited capacity to provide maximum benefit for delegates. 

The importance of right to work training

When hiring any new employee, organisations must follow the ‘prescribed requirements’ in order to obtain the ‘statutory excuse’ and so avoid a civil penalty for illegal employment.

These prescribed requirements essentially require an employer to check documents and verify an employee’s working status prior to offering them employment.

Where relevant, employers must conduct follow-up checks to ensure that their employee’s status remains valid.

While this sounds simple in theory, the task may become problematic where an employee is unable to produce a document that unequivocally demonstrates a right to work in the UK.

UK employers must carry out Right to Work checks on all employees or face significant Home Office penalties.

The law requires all companies to check and retain evidence of each employee’s legal right to work in the UK.

UK companies found to be employing an individual who does not have permission to work in the UK can be issued a fine of up to £20,000 per illegal worker, among other punitive measures.

Even where companies recognise their duties under the Right To Work legislation, and operate with policies and processes to comply, there are many practical issues that can give rise to a breach and result in enforcement action against the employer.

For example, it can be challenging to achieve consistency in implementing Right to Work processes across an organisation with multiple sites and a large and changing workforce. The guidelines are also extensive and hard to interpret, and UKVI frequently change the legislation making it difficult to stay up to date with the latest requirements.

Right to work: employer considerations

The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 requires all companies to check and retain evidence of each employee’s legal right to work in the UK. Section 8 provides that all companies must check and retain relevant documentation in a prescribed format that demonstrates that an employee has the legal right to work in the United Kingdom. Section 22 determines that the checks must be made in a non-discriminatory manner. All employees must be checked regardless of nationality, length of service and role within the company.

Your HR processes and policies should be shaped around meeting the Home Office guidance of verifying each employee’s right to work by obtaining, checking and recording relevant acceptable types of documentation.

At the pre-employment stage, you should be asking all potential new employees to bring along their original passport or identity document. If the recruit is a British citizen and does not have a passport, you must request to see the original birth certificate (the long or short version) and P45, or other evidence of registration with HMRC.

You then have to determine whether an employee should be categorised as a List A employee or List B employee, as this will dictate the forms of ‘acceptable’ documentation that must be presented to you by the individual.

Employers will only be afforded a statutory defence in law against a civil penalty if they can prove that they have correctly signed off on the retained documents, and stored them securely.

Among the record keeping duties, you must also keep a copy of the Right to Work check for at least 2 years after an employee leaves your organisation.

For organisations, the Right to Work regime presents a number of risks. The Right to Work rules – and the resulting requirements place on employers – are subject to frequent change. 

List B workers with time-limited permission to work must be subject to repeat checks and where an employee loses the right to work, the employer should take advice to falling foul of employment law issues. In addition, all personnel – including non-HR – involved in recruiting and onboarding new recruits, such as line and site managers, should be trained on their Right to Work duties and processes.

Right to Work compliance is an ongoing demand. The Home Office is looking for continued monitoring of HR processes and consistent and competent implementation to ensure ongoing compliance. A copy of the documents must be retained for the duration of the employment.

Rules and regulations surrounding the Right to Work in the UK should be taken seriously. The Home Office is proactive in pursuing employers for non-compliance with the regulations.

Where the Home Office suspects an organisation is employing workers illegally, perhaps as a result of specific intelligence such as an anonymous tip-off or complaint from a former employee, they can attend the employer’s premises without notice to investigate the allegations.

Immigration raids are daunting. Immigration officials will expect to examine records of your Right to Work checks and all other documents relating to your migrant workers to determine whether your migrant employees are lawfully employed or if you are in breach of your duties. They can also interview migrant workers.

If the immigration enforcement officers find evidence that employees are working illegally, they may be detained and subsequently deported. The business can then face a number of penalties, which, depending on the severity and number of the breaches, could include:

• Substantial fines, known as a civil penalty – this can be up to £20,000 per illegal worker
• Losing your trading license
• Business listed on the Government public list
• Sponsor licence downgrading, suspension or revocation
• Criminal conviction of up to five years
• Closure of business by the court
• Seizure of earnings

The level of civil penalty you receive for illegal working will depend on the specific facts of your individual case, such as whether you are deemed to have knowingly hired an illegal worker or if this the organisation’s first breach.

A statutory excuse

If you are facing allegations that you have employed illegal workers at your business, you may be able to rely on a ‘statutory excuse’ as a defence to either seek to reduce the fine or have it cancelled altogether.

The statutory excuse may apply if can show you have completed compliant Right to Work checks on the employee(s) in question, and can show there is a consistent system in place for checking employees’ working status, and that the unlawful status was as a result of an error or was discovered at a later stage. In other words, you have met the requirements under law to perform document checks and are able to evidence how you have been compliant with the rules.

It is not enough to simply photocopy a candidate’s documents and show them as part of statutory excuse. You have to show a consistent and compliant approach to Right to Work checks, making an audit trail and record keeping of your document checks and processes critical.

A full assessment of your case by an immigration specialist will help to identify any grounds for challenge, including examining the Home Office’s conduct and procedure to ensure the fine was lawfully issued.