The much-criticised sponsorship system is set for ‘radical change’ but are there still factors that make the UK less appealing to much needed migrant workers that the government is unwilling to confront, asks immigration lawyer Joanna Hunt
The concept of sponsorship has been central to the UK’s work based visa system for decades. Sponsorship works by limiting the pool of talent who can apply for work visas and the types of roles they can take up. A would-be applicant must secure a job that reaches set skill and salary thresholds, with an employer who is willing and able to sponsor them and is in possession of the relevant Home Office approved sponsor licence. Once in the UK, the visa holder can only work for the employer in this set role, except in a limited range of circumstances.
The restrictive nature of the sponsorship system is now facing a number of challenges. The UK’s exit from the EU, and the resulting end to free movement for EU nationals, means businesses must increasingly use the sponsorship system if they want to continue to employ European workers. This is exposing many of the system’s inherent flaws. The lengthy and intrusive forms, the bureaucratic burden that sponsors have to undertake to become sponsors and the spiralling costs are frustrating many businesses and deterring applicants. The concern is that this could impact on the UK’s ability to compete for foreign talent on the global stage.
Right to work in the UK
Global Talent Visa criteria should be relaxed to protect arts sector
‘Mad rush’ to attain EU settlement status
The Home Office is alive to this and has been promising an overhaul of the sponsorship system for some time. It has now released its roadmap for reform, full of ambitious promises to deliver “radical changes” to sponsorship. The document sets out the key steps the Home Office intends to take over the next couple of years that it hopes will “remove and demystify” barriers to using the current sponsorship system. The sponsorship system has been unaltered for some time so many of the proposals are long overdue and will be a welcome relief for many businesses.
Firstly, the application process for securing a sponsor licence will be streamlined, reducing the amount of documents a business has to provide, ensuring a quicker end to end process. Once a business secures a sponsor licence, this will no longer have an expiry date, avoiding the four-year renewal process current sponsors have to complete. The Home Office is keen to ensure that SMEs are able to negotiate the system effectively and will be undergoing research to ensure the system is workable for businesses of all sizes.
With fees in the region of £10,000 per worker for five-year visas, the sponsorship system is too expensive for many firms to use as a sustainable solution to the skills shortages they are experiencing post Brexit”
The technology underpinning the sponsorship system will be improved. Its current iteration, the sponsor management system, is woefully outdated, offering very little in the way of functionality and data retrieval. The new system will be easier to use and require less repetitive information of applicants. The Home Office has promised that the new tech will make it easier for employers to manage their own sponsor licences, to get real time updates on the progress of applications and to
view information about their sponsored workers.
One of the biggest bugbears for businesses is the fact that the system requires sponsors to comply with myriad record-keeping and reporting duties on behalf of their sponsored workers. These will be less burdensome following the reforms, as the Home Office plans to reduce the amount of information a HR team needs to keep on file for their sponsored workers by sharing data with other government departments such as HMRC. The Home Office still intends to carry out compliance visits at the workplaces of sponsor licence holders, indicating that sponsors are still at risk of losing their licence if they fail to meet their duties. Visits, though, will be more targeted at those sponsors considered to be high risk or with no track record of compliance.
The proposals in the roadmap are to be welcomed and should provide some much needed modernisation. However, there is a concern this may not go far enough, particularly for those industry sectors facing acute staffing crises.
Simply put, the biggest issue with the current sponsorship system is the exorbitant costs involved. With fees in the region of £10,000 per worker for five-year visas, the sponsorship system is too expensive for many firms to use as a sustainable solution to the skills shortages they are experiencing post Brexit. The roadmap indicates that there will be a review of fees to ensure they are “fair” but little detail is given and the Home Office has thus far shown itself to be reluctant to ease up on costs.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
International job seekers with options to work elsewhere are easily put off by having to sit English language tests and complete forms with long since forgotten information. Businesses, too, need a system that is easy to negotiate that doesn’t excessively penalise inadvertent mistakes. For meaningful change to take place, the Home Office needs to stop focusing on cutting numbers. Instead it needs to create a sponsorship system which is welcome and inclusive that can be used to attract and retain talent in the UK long term.
