Be Prepared for a Home Office Compliance Visit: Top Tips for Student Sponsors

Anna: Hello and a warm welcome to the next instalment of Doyle Clayton’s Education Podcast Series on being prepared for Home Office Compliance Visits and our top tips. My name is Anna Blackden and I am a Senior Associate Solicitor and student visa sponsor specialist. I am joined today by my colleague Briar Koko, a Senior Paralegal who regularly carries out Mock Compliance audits for both student and staff sponsors.

Together, we will explain why the Home Office may come knocking at your education provider’s door and what key actions you can take to be prepared for such a visit. Our top tips will help ensure that your institution’s sponsor licence is protected from Home Office enforcement action. Don’t forget a sponsor licence is a valuable asset as it allows the recruitment and enrolment of international students, and potentially to hire and sponsor staff if you also hold a worker sponsor licence.

Briar, you regularly carry out Mock Compliance visits with the aim of recreating what a real Home Office Compliance Visit would entail. So what would you be looking for?

Briar: Only independent schools, colleges or universities which are approved sponsors, or have applied to be would receive a Home Office Compliance Visit. The purpose of a Compliance Visit is to check that the information a sponsor has provided to the Home Office remains accurate. Compliance Officers would also check a sponsor is able and continuing to comply with its sponsorship duties and the specific reporting and record keeping requirements for its sponsored students or staff. In my experience, the circumstances in which the Home Office take enforcement action against an education provider’s sponsor licence are usually brought to light during such a Home Office Compliance Visit.

Anna: In other words, any sponsor compliance breaches or failings can crystallise on a visit. But how are such potential breaches actually discovered by the Home Office during their visit?

Briar: Well, a Compliance Visit normally involves interviewing key staff to assess compliance in certain areas. The Home Office also conducts file reviews of sponsored migrants to assess compliance with record keeping duties, check right to study records of non-sponsored students and may also involve conducting interviews with sponsored migrants. There is no fixed amount of files reviewed, as this can depend on the numbers of sponsored migrants, but the Home Office will always review a higher percentage of sponsored student files to non-sponsored students.

Where an education provider also holds a sponsor licence in another visa category such as a Skilled Worker Sponsor Licence for staff, the sponsor should be notified about the scope of the Compliance Visit and whether both categories will be inspected during the same visit.

Anna, you previously worked in-house at a Student Sponsor and have been on the receiving end of a Home Office visit. Were you notified in advance that Home Office Compliance Officers would arrive?

Anna: The visit my former employer received was actually unannounced. Although less common, the Home Office can come with no notice as it allows Compliance Officers to see sponsors in their normal working environment and to check that sponsored students are actually attending their scheduled classes. However, the majority of visits are announced with 1 to 2 weeks’ notice.

Briar, how does the Home Office choose which sponsors to visit, is it random?

Briar: The Home Office do two types of visits: Pre Licence Assessment Visits and Post Licence Compliance Visits. Those applying for the first time to be a student sponsor are prioritised for Visits. For existing student sponsors, a Compliance Visit can arise for a number of reasons – this can include intelligence received such as employing an illegal worker, requesting a disproportionate increase in your annual CAS allocation, following concerns with your Basic Compliance Assessment metrics, using unscrupulous recruitment agents or following a significant change of circumstances report. The Home Office also indicated last year that it intended to visit all student sponsors in the next 12 months. As at May 2024, there were just over 1,000 licensed student sponsors so they will be busy.

It is also important to remember that although student sponsors no longer have licence expiry dates, Home Office compliance activity is continuing, as well as annual Basic Compliance assessments and CAS allocation requests.

So, Anna what are the potential consequences when a Home Office Compliance Visit identifies sponsor compliance failings?

Anna: The consequences can be serious and in a worst case scenario lead to your education provider’s licence being revoked with all your sponsored students having to either find a new sponsor or leave the UK within 60 days. Other unwelcome consequences include the significant loss of international student fee income and reputational damage. Home Office sponsorship stats for 2023 show that 16 student sponsors received a letter from the Home Office indicating an intention to revoke their licence, with four licences actually revoked.

So Briar, with all this in mind, what’s your first top tip so that student sponsors can be well prepared for a real Home Office Compliance Visit?

Briar: My first top tip

Keep your sponsor licence up to date at all times

Sponsors have a duty to keep the Home Office informed if there are any significant changes to their provider’s circumstances – this could be a change of ownership, change in educational oversight rating, change of name, the addition of a new teaching site or change to charitable status; or simply changes to Key Personnel on the licence. The Licence Summary is a good starting point to see what information the Home Office hold and whether information is out of date. We recommend keeping copies of all reports made to the Home Office.

If in doubt about the sponsor licence implications of a certain change in your education provider’s circumstances, we recommend you contact Doyle Clayton for advice.

What’s your top tip Anna?

Anna: My top tip is

Carefully Prepare ‘Appendix D’ files on your sponsored students

Appendix D of the Immigration Rules sets out the documents that student sponsors must retain in respect of their sponsored students, or sponsored staff. For students such documents include a student’s current passport, Biometric Residence Permit or digital immigration status, UK contact details, educational qualifications and evidence of their English Language ability and attendance record. When I worked in house, I used a Checklist for each sponsored student so that I could be satisfied shortly after enrolment we held an ‘Appendix D’ compliant file.

Although sponsors can hold such records electronically or in hard copy, I would also recommend preparing hard copies of the files selected by the Home Office. Where time allows, this approach has the advantage of providing a sponsor more control over what documents and information are disclosed. In this regard, we recommend being as selective and narrow as possible with what you disclose to the Home Office. So, unless specifically requested, do not also include, for example, credibility interview transcripts or bank statements as these are not mandatory documents for sponsors to retain.

What’s your next top tip Briar?

Briar: Our third top tip is 

Implement your Sponsor Compliance Policies in Practice

When I conduct Mock Audits, I find the most compliant education providers are always those that have robust visa sponsorship systems and processes, and actually implement them in practice. With effective systems in place, good compliance with sponsor record keeping and reporting duties follows. Policies should also reflect current Home Office Student Sponsor Guidance and Immigration Rules, I recommend including the date of review on the policy document to help demonstrate to Compliance Officers that you are not relying on outdated policies.

Student sponsors must meet annual metrics relating to visa refusal, enrolment and course completion rates for their sponsored students in order to pass their Basic Compliance Assessments. Accordingly, if your International Admissions Policy has certain measures to minimise visa refusals such as ‘genuine student’ credibility interviews or checking bank statements before a CAS is assigned, it is really important to adhere to this and implement in practice.

Anna: You are right Briar. Student sponsors need to be prepared to demonstrate to a Home Office Compliance Officer how they monitor academic engagement of their sponsored students and what systems they have in place to know when their duty to report poor attendance to the Home Office has been triggered! This is especially important as a Compliance Officer may scrutinise sponsorship withdrawals on academic engagement grounds during a Compliance Visit.

My next tip is to

Ensure you have diligent child safeguarding arrangements if you sponsor students under 18

Child safeguarding is one of the Home Office’s key risk areas in student visa sponsorship, especially relating to child trafficking and international abduction. This is a compliance area which principally affects the independent school sector who can sponsor under 18’s on the Child Student visa route. However, all student sponsors who recruit international students under the age of 18, including colleges and universities, must ensure that there are suitable care and living arrangements in place for them in the UK and comply with certain mandatory record keeping duties. This includes retaining a copy of the signed Parental Consent letter on their file.

Independent Schools are facing more questions during Home Office Compliance Visits regarding private fostering arrangements. For sponsored students under the age of 18, if their UK living arrangements change, any changes may need to be reported to the Home Office and updated parental consent letters should always be obtained and held on file. Where a sponsored students’ parents live overseas, I recommend that a sponsor obtains from the parents’ details of a UK based education guardian before assigning a CAS.

Briar, what is your final top tip to be prepared for a Home Office Compliance Visit?

Briar: My final top tip has to be

Regular Staff Training on Sponsor Compliance.

Without sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable staff to implement your policies and processes, your education provider’s sponsor licence will be placed at risk.

In the same way that HR staff should have regular training on conducting Right to Work checks on all employees, Admissions staff should receive basic UK visa training so that they can implement a student sponsor’s general duty to carry out Right to Study Check on all enrolling students. Likewise, if your education provider also holds a Skilled Worker Sponsor licence, HR personnel must be aware of the corresponding sponsor record keeping and reporting duties for such sponsored staff.

Anna: I agree Briar. Often the key to strengthening sponsor compliance requires the support and buy in from an institution’s senior leaders and managers, ensuring that such individuals are aware of sponsor duties and the consequences of non-compliance through such training is equally crucial.

In summary, the guiding principle at the heart of the Home Office’s sponsorship system is that sponsoring non-UK nationals to study or work in the UK is a privilege and not a right. Sponsors who benefit from enrolling and hiring non-UK nationals are expected to play their part in supporting UK immigration control. Your goal during a Home Office Compliance Visit is prove you can be trusted to do just that.

This now brings us to the end of our podcast, we hope you found it helpful. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Doyle Clayton’s Mock Audit Services, whether you hold a Student licence, Staff licence or both, please do get in touch!