Sponsoring migrant workers comes with significant responsibility where, throughout the validity period of a sponsor licence, the Home Office will categorise an organisation as either A- or B-rated. This will be based on its assessment of the sponsor’s ability to continue to comply with its sponsor duties and behave in a way that is compatible with being licensed. This essentially means that for any sponsor licence holder who fails to discharge its sponsorship duties, the Home Office can take action for non-compliance with the rules, including downgrading the sponsor licence rating from an A-rating to a B-rating.
There are a number of scenarios in which a licence may be downgraded. This could be, for example, if the Home Office believes that a sponsor no longer has the necessary processes in place to comply with its sponsor duties, typically following a post-licence compliance visit. A downgrade decision can also be made where the Home Office has asked for information held by the organisation but the sponsor has failed to comply with that request.
