Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law's Ross Kennedy explains why employers with a sponsor licence will be relieved by the latest guidance for sponsors in Personnel Today. In a shock reversal of Home Office guidance published in March, then April, the latest updates published on 20 May 2026 have removed wording which required employers sponsoring workers to conduct right to work checks on anyone they “directly engage”. 

Ross Kennedy tells the publication for HR professionals: “In March the update to guidance for employers with a sponsor licence was very unclear leaving sponsoring businesses confused as to their right-to-work duties. The Home Office clarified the guidance in April by insisting employers with a sponsor licence must conduct right to work checks on anyone they “directly engage” – even non-employees. That left businesses potentially liable to have to check the right to work of self-employed plumbers called out to fix a leak.

“Under the previous wording sponsors were at high risk of losing their sponsor licence if they were not checking the right to work of people they were not even responsible for. You weren’t employing or sponsoring them – they were third parties and yet you were the one at risk.

“Losing a sponsor licence means losing the ability to recruit international workers and losing the international workers you currently sponsor along with all the employment law consequences that may entail.”

Ross Kennedy adds: “This reversal takes the guidance back to the situation before March, which will be a massive relief to personnel teams. Sponsors now only need to do right to work checks now on people they do employ and anyone they sponsor.”

It is crucial that HR teams stay on top of all updates to sponsor guidance and compliance if they are sponsoring any workers. Please feel free to contact [email protected] if you would like to discuss any of these changes or an audit of your sponsor or right to work compliance. With increasing UK Visa and Immigration enforcement action, it’s important to ensure you are on top of the latest updates to these practices. 

You can read the article in Personnel Today here. 

Ross goes into more detail on this massive reversal and what it now means here and also covers the other major updates to sponsorship guidance published by the Home Office last week. These include:

 

  • Sponsors don’t need to conduct right to work checks on non-sponsored workers they “directly engage" rather than employ. NB: The guidance insists sponsors must perform checks on all sponsored staff - whether employees or not and all unsponsored employees.

 

  • Expansion in sponsors’ record keeping duties to include records of right to work checks on all employees.

 

  • The Home Office will likely revoke a sponsor licence if a sponsored worker doesn’t have relevant right to work permission.

 

  • Refusing and revoking sponsor licence applications when it is presumed they are primarily constructed to bring someone to the UK. Does this suitability ground leave to revocation also?

  • How to satisfy the Home Office an organisation is operating or trading to qualify for a sponsor licence. Or is it only the operating or trading ground that can lead to refusal as well as revocation? If so we need to reference that here?