Sponsor licences for health and social care
Care homes, domiciliary providers and healthcare groups. The most heavily audited sector on the register, and the one where a revocation does the most damage fastest.
What UKVI looks hardest at here
The duties are identical in every sector. What a visiting officer pulls out of your files is not — and in health and social care these are the things that get examined first.
CQC registration, and whether it matches the entity applying
Whether the vacancy is genuine and there is actual work to do
Rotas and attendance records against the hours on the certificate
Whether sponsored staff are paid the rate stated, without deductions that pull them under it
Where care employers get caught
Sponsoring more staff than the care package volume can support.
Recovering sponsorship costs from the worker's wages — this alone can cost you the licence.
Care providers that have never had a UKVI visit assuming the CQC inspection covers it. It does not.
None of these are unusual. They are the ordinary operating conditions of the sector colliding with reporting deadlines nobody owns.
The deadlines that apply to you
These are the same for every sponsor. Read them against the traps above — most of those are a missed 10-working-day report wearing a sector-specific disguise.
Reporting
A sponsored worker does not start
They fail to turn up on their first day, or never arrive in the UK at all.
A sponsored worker stops working for you
Resignation, dismissal, redundancy, or the contract ending. Report the date and the reason.
Unauthorised absence of 10 or more days
Ten consecutive working days missed with no permission and no explanation you accept.
A significant change to the job
Salary, duties, hours, occupation code or work location changing enough to matter.
A change to your business
Address, ownership, structure, a merger or takeover, insolvency, or a change of key personnel.
Hiring into health and social care?
Tell us the roles and where the business is up to. We will come back with whether you would be granted, what it costs, and the sector-specific things a visiting officer would ask you about.