The Employment Law Dimension in Sponsor licence compliance: A Broader Duty Than You Might Think

2nd April 2026 | Employment, Immigration, Sponsor Licence

The Home Office updated its sponsor licence guidance on 9 March 2026 that is effective immediate and added new changes to the rules effective from 8 April 2026. In this joint Employment & immigration Department article, we review the most important changes that our clients should be aware of and take on board.

Employment Law

Amongst other new obligations, it brings into sharper focus an issue that employment lawyers have long recognised: good employment practice and sponsor compliance are not mutually exclusive. For UK businesses, the two are now expressly linked.

The March 2025 updates to the sponsor guidance (Part 1, paragraphs L2.6 and L2.7, and Appendix D, paragraph 5(l)) require sponsors (employers) to inform sponsored workers of their UK employment rights— and to keep evidence of this. The Home Office has made  it clear: this duty goes beyond issuing a written statement of employment particulars under section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Sponsors must ensure that workers genuinely understand all their UK employment law rights.

What does that actually mean?

 

Core Employment Law Obligations

UK employment law is contained within multiple statutes, spanning across various legislation, and several obligations are relevant here:

 

1. Written Statement of Employment Particulars — Employment Rights Act 1996, s.1

Employers must provide all employees and workers with a written statement of their principal employment terms on or before their first working day, including pay, hours, holiday entitlement, notice periods, job title and workplace, among others. This is a day-one right. For sponsored workers, issuing a compliant written statement is the minimum.

 

2. Health and Safety Policy — Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.2(3)

Employers with five or more employees must have a written health and safety policy and must bring it to the attention of their workforce. Simply making this information available (e.g. on an intranet) isn’t sufficient. For sponsored workers less familiar with UK workplace norms, active communication of this policy is key—for compliance and workers’ understanding.

 

3. Right to Join a Trade Union — Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, s.136A

Employers must provide workers with a written statement confirming their right to join a trade union. This can be incorporated into the written statement of particulars or issued separately. For sponsored workers arriving from jurisdictions where trade union membership is not recognised, their right may not be self-evident.

 

What Should Employers Do to ensure compliance?

The Home Office does not prescribe a single process. However, given the requirement to retain evidence of how this duty has been discharged (Appendix D, paragraph 5(l)), a structured and documented approach is essential.

 

Employers should consider:

• Reviewing onboarding processes to ensure it actively communicates employment rights, (as opposed to it being buried in offer packs or online portals).
• Updating written statements to ensure strict compliance with s.1 ERA 1996 requirements, including the trade union statement under TULRCA 1992.
• Producing clear employment rights summaries —as a standalone document, a section in the staff handbook, or a well-structured onboarding email —signposting key rights & accessible resources (i.e. the Acas website and government guidance).
• Ensuring health and safety policies are actively communicated at induction, retaining signed acknowledgement on file.
• Retaining evidence of delivery — for example, signed acknowledgements, email records, or onboarding checklists — so that compliance can be demonstrated in the event of Home Office audits or compliance visits.

The Home Office sets out a broad but not exhaustive evidential framework (Appendix D, paragraph 5(l)). The key point is that sponsored workers must be informed of their rights, not merely that paperwork has been filed.

 

Why This Matters for Businesses

Failure to comply with sponsor duties – including this record-keeping requirement – can result in a downgrade of the sponsor licence rating or, even, licence suspension or revocation. Therefore, cutting corners is not a viable strategy.

Equally, the employment law obligations underpinning this duty are not new. Section 1 ERA 1996 stipulates an employee’s right to bring tribunal claims for failure to provide a compliant written statement, and tribunals can award additional compensation where this is found alongside another claims. Getting this right protects the business on both fronts.

 

Immigration law updates

Other immigration changes to sponsor obligations include

 

1. Salary minimums to be paid monthly

From 8 April 2026, a worker must be paid the required salary or above for sponsorship in monthly or less frequent pay periods, or as otherwise specified in their contract. Salary must meet the going rate for the occupation code each hour worked during each pay period and the average salary must meet the required amount across any three-month period for monthly or less frequent pay periods, or in any 12-week period in more frequent pay periods (rather than over a year as was previously the case).

The rule is coinciding with the UKVI expanding its data sharing with the HMRC. Therefore, the main goal is to allow UKVI to assess whether a worker is being paid enough more quickly, including the fact that they do not need to wait to see if it averages out over a year.

We therefore suggest the employers to check their payment patterns and to ensure that all sponsored employees’ pay is meeting their minimum salary threshold as stated in their Certificate of Sponsorship.

 

2. Expansion of right to work obligations

The sponsor guidance has been updated in a way which materially widens the expected scope of right to work checks. It now indicates that sponsors must carry out checks where they are employing or engaging a worker, whether sponsored or not. On its face, this appears to extend the obligation beyond direct employees and into wider working arrangements, including, potentially, self-employed contractors, secondees and other non-traditional engagements.

This is a significant development. Many sponsors will not historically have undertaken right to work checks on self-employed individuals, because the current illegal working regime is generally framed around employment and does not require a statutory excuse to be established in those cases. The March 2026 sponsor guidance nevertheless now makes clear that, where a sponsored worker is engaged in a genuine self-employed capacity, sponsors must still carry out and retain evidence of right to work checks for sponsorship purposes. this is broadly in line with the government’s earlier consultation and policy direction on expanding right to work checks beyond traditional employment.

At present, however, the precise scope of this change remains uncertain. The term engaging is not defined in the sponsor guidance or the Rules, and that creates obvious ambiguity for sponsors using contingent labour or other indirect models. Pending further guidance, the prudent approach is to carry out right to work checks for all individuals providing services to the business where there is any realistic risk that the arrangement could fall within scope, including self-employed contractors, secondees and similar categories. That will not eliminate risk entirely, particularly as the position for genuinely self-employed workers sits awkwardly with the current statutory illegal working framework, but it is the clearest available mitigation against compliance action and potential licence revocation.

 

3. Duty to read sponsor guidance in full

Sponsors are now expected to take a far more active role in monitoring and understanding their compliance obligations. UKVI makes clear that sponsors must read, in full, the guidance relevant to their licence, including Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the sponsor guidance, the relevant appendices, the route-specific guidance and the glossary, and must remain aware of any updates made to those documents over time.

For Skilled Worker sponsors alone, this material runs to several hundred pages, with further guidance required where additional routes are held on the licence. Although our previous advice will have distilled the key obligations and reflected the position at the time it was provided, UKVI now places the responsibility squarely on sponsors to remain familiar with the source guidance itself and with any changes introduced, often at short notice.

In practical terms, this means ensuring that your Level 1 User logs into the Sponsor Management System at least monthly to review the message board for relevant updates, and that this forms part of your regular compliance process. Given the volume of material and the frequency with which the guidance changes, this is an area where many sponsors would benefit from structured support. We therefore recommend periodic training for HR teams, key personnel and operational stakeholders on current sponsor duties and wider UK immigration compliance obligations.

 

Recommended next steps

These changes increase the compliance burden on sponsors and make robust internal processes more important than ever. Sponsors should consider an immediate review of their employment law obligations, right to work check procedures, sponsor obligations, including whether current processes adequately cover all relevant categories of worker and whether actual pay is being monitored across pay periods, rather than relying solely on contractual salary.

It would also be sensible to review employment contracts, policies, handbooks and worker communications to ensure these reflect current immigration and sponsorship requirements.

We can support with targeted training on current sponsor duties and wider UK immigration compliance obligations, as well as sponsor licence health checks and broader compliance audits, to help identify gaps and reduce risk.

Please contact your relevant contact at Sherrards to enquire about this, or contact our Employment & Immigration team.

This article has been collaboratively written by Nelli Shevchenko, Senior Associate, Emma Peacock, Partner, and Ella Newman, Trainee, all in our Employment & Immigration team, bringing together combined expertise across both disciplines to provide a practical, joined-up perspective on these changes.