Assistance with Home Office Compliance

Ensuring you are Home Office compliant and prepared for a visit

Once you have a sponsor licence (or when you apply for one), the Home Office can and may carry out a compliance visit. This can be virtual or in person and can involve reviewing files and policies and interviewing key personal and employees. Regardless of whether you anticipate a visit, you must ensure your internal processes are Home Office compliant.

Assistance with Home Office compliance

The purpose of a Home Office visit is to check that you are fully compliant and properly discharging your sponsor duties. There may be different reasons for a visit and visits may be announced, although often with short notice, or unannounced. Visits may be made at the pre-licence application or post licence stage.

You can expect a visit to take several hours or more and the Home Office will usually want to interview sponsored staff and review your HR files and your reporting and record keeping. There can be various outcomes to a visit which include retaining, suspending, revoking or downgrading your sponsor licence.

Our team can assist with preparing for such a visit including preparing key staff, carrying out an audit and or reviewing all your files and processes. We can also help you to deal with any adverse outcome from the visit. If you have notice of the visit, we can attend to assist with the Home Office enquiries.

Assistance with internal compliance

Sponsor licence internal compliance can be demanding and complex. The work involved includes HR processes, record keeping and retaining specific documentation for specific periods in particular formats, as well as monitoring and reporting duties. Our team can support you in all aspects of compliance, whether you have just one sponsored employee or a number across different workplace settings. We can also assist with the implications of a merger or other organisational change and the impact this may have on your sponsor licence.

Call us to speak to a member of our team

Our immigration team has considerable experience of all types of Home Office visit and compliance issues. We can act at short notice or help in the longer-term preparation of your application for and maintenance of your licence. Please get in touch if you’d like to arrange an appointment.

Or visit Immigration Services for more information.

Solicitors in

Nighat Sahi

Partner

Nighat has been superb, very thorough and a very nice person too, I couldn’t recommend her highly enough. I am confident that I am safe in her hands.

Some advice to everyone out there is make sure that you have Nighat Sahi of RSW Law on your contact list, so you have someone to contact immediately if you need help. In over 30 years of running Interface Financial Planning I have never had to suffer a malicious court action before and I made the initial mistake of trying to deal with it myself. If I had passed this to Nighat on the day of receipt it would have saved a lot of stress and time.

Alan Moran, B.Sc. M.Soc.Sc. Cert.Ed. FPFS FSWW IMC CFPCM RLP® Chartered Financial Planner – Chartered FCSI, Interface Financial Planning Limited

Nighat Sahi

Partner

Nighat is an experienced solicitor who advises and represents both companies and individuals. She is a founding partner at RSW Law. With over 18 years of experience, she specialises in all key areas of employment law, business and in bound immigration work. She has been involved in numerous complex, high value and multi-faceted matters including complex injunctions, damages claims and high value negotiations in contractual disputes and severance packages.

Nighat’s experience includes litigation and representation at Employment or Immigration Tribunal level right through to the Court of Appeal, advice on best practice, procedures and policies, drafting key employment documents, managing grievances, disciplinary action and performance related concerns and lawful dismissals. Also an experienced immigration solicitor, Nighat has extensive knowledge of business immigration, placing employees across UK companies in addition to dealing with the Global Mobility Routes and selective family visas.

Clients value Nighat’s approach and find her highly organised, knowledgeable, and extremely personable. She takes a proactive approach, working to avoid problems in the first place. If the worst does happen, she works hard to resolve things in the most cost effective and timely way possible and you’ll find her down to earth and hands on.

Nighat is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association, is the Current Chair of Kiran Support Services (a Charity – supporting the needs of women and children from the Indian sub-continent experiencing domestic violence and abuse) and acts for The Black-E (a Charity Education, Enthusiasm, Energy, Connecting artists and communities) on a pro bono basis.

Nighat has recently achieved a victory for a client in a speedy trial. The full Judgment can be read here: https://www.civillitigationbrief.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Cheshire-v-Blanchfield.pdf

Outside of work, Nighat is a gym enthusiast, foody, loves her films, travelling and spends her time with her ten nephews and nieces.

Assistance with Home Office Compliance

Ensuring you are Home Office compliant and prepared for a visit