Home Office Compliance Visit UK 2026

Guidance on Home Office and UKVI compliance visits from Waltham Law Chambers. What's assessed, how to prepare, and responding to action plans — advice from our Leyton immigration lawyers.

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Home Office Compliance Visit

If your business holds — or has applied for — a sponsor licence, UKVI can carry out a compliance visit with little or no advance notice, either on-site at your premises or as a desktop digital audit. These visits assess whether you're genuinely meeting your sponsor duties, and the consequences of falling short range from a formal action plan through to licence suspension or outright revocation — which, in turn, can jeopardise the immigration status of every worker you sponsor. Enforcement activity has intensified sharply in recent years, and increasingly relies on cross-referencing your data against HMRC, payroll and Companies House records rather than waiting for a physical site visit.

We assist employers with routine preparation for a Home Office compliance visit by reviewing the records supplied, discussing sponsor duties and explaining the visit process. Any attendance or further assistance is subject to a separate assessment of scope and competence.

Who This Service Is For

Businesses that hold a sponsor licence under any route (Skilled Worker, Global Business Mobility, Health & Care Worker, Student, or others) and want to be genuinely audit-ready

Organisations that have been notified of an upcoming compliance visit, digital audit request, or interview

Sponsors who have received a UKVI action plan following identified breaches, and need to respond within the required deadline

Start-ups and owner-managed businesses, who UKVI guidance indicates now face closer scrutiny of role genuineness and business substance

What UKVI Assesses

Compliance visits and audits are structured around five core areas:

Monitoring immigration status — are you actively tracking visa expiry dates and each sponsored worker's continued right to work?
Maintaining migrant contact details — do you hold current, accurate addresses and contact information for every sponsored worker?
Reporting duties — are you reporting relevant changes to UKVI via the Sponsorship Management System within the required 10 working days? This includes a worker being absent without permission for 10 or more consecutive working days, employment ending for any reason, or a significant change to role, job title or salary
Record-keeping — do you hold the required documents for each sponsored worker, retained for the duration of their employment and for at least one year afterwards, including right to work evidence, contact details, and role documentation?
Genuine vacancy and business substance — can you evidence that sponsored roles are genuine, appropriately skilled and salaried, and that your business has a real, ongoing need for the worker, supported by financial and operational evidence where required?

Two Recent Changes Worth Knowing About

Right to work checks have been simplified back. Guidance updated in April 2026 briefly extended right to work check obligations to individuals "directly engaged" by a sponsor, even where not formally employed. This was reversed from 20 May 2026, restoring the previous, narrower position covering sponsored workers and direct employees. This isn't a relaxation of standards generally — the guidance continues to link right to work failures directly to licence revocation and civil penalty risk, and scrutiny in this area remains high.

A new duty to inform workers of their rights. From 6 March 2026, sponsors must actively inform sponsored workers of their UK employment rights and retain verifiable evidence that this has been done — for example, a signed acknowledgement, or system logs showing a worker accessed rights information through an intranet or portal. This is a new, standalone record-keeping obligation under Appendix D, separate from simply having employment contracts or a staff handbook in place.

Salary compliance is now checked per pay period. As of 7 April 2026, sponsored workers must be paid at least the required minimum salary within each individual pay period, rather than this being assessed as an average across the year — making it considerably easier for UKVI to detect underpayment in any single period.

What Happens If Breaches Are Identified

UKVI Action Plan. Where breaches are identified but considered capable of being fixed, UKVI may issue an action plan, tailored to your organisation's specific failings. This carries a non-refundable administration fee (currently £1,579), payable within 10 working days — missing this deadline results in automatic licence revocation. Your licence is downgraded while the action plan is in effect, and you'll need to demonstrate sustained compliance within the set timeframe to be restored to good standing.

Licence suspension. Your licence, and your ability to assign new Certificates of Sponsorship, can be suspended while the Home Office investigates more serious concerns.
Licence revocation. In the most serious cases, your licence can be revoked outright — this typically requires currently sponsored workers to find alternative sponsorship or leave the UK within a set period, and can significantly affect your organisation's reputation and ability to sponsor in future.

Sponsor licence revocations and suspensions have risen sharply in recent years, with enforcement particularly focused on sectors including social care, hospitality, retail and construction, often around underpayment, poor record-keeping and worker exploitation concerns.

How We Help — Our Process

We can help identify routine administrative steps arising from a visit where the work falls within our authorisation. A response involving contested findings, complex legal arguments or enforcement action requires assessment by an appropriately authorised provider.