Founded in 2005, Cherish UK is a leading provider of care and support service with offices across the North West of England, which employs over 800 people, including around 170 Skilled Worker visa holders.
How Migrate UK helped
What the Home Office requested:
Cherish UK contacted Migrate UK following an email from the Home Office that advised the organisation that they ‘reserve the right to revoke a licence where there is a serious of systemic breach’ of sponsor duties. Following ‘concerns that suggest’ Cherish UK may not be paying their sponsored workers as per their Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS), the Home Office then requested:
- Contracts for all sponsored workers,
- Corporate/business accounts for the last 6 months,
- Payslips for all sponsored workers for last 6 months,
- Pay Run Report / Payroll Summary / Real Time Information confirming gross and net pay, NI and Tax deductions for all sponsored workers.
Cherish UK were given 2 weeks to share these documents with the Home Office by email.
Our risk assessment:
Our first concern was that the Home Office were going to make a decision to revoke a sponsor licence without meeting with the organisation, which is what we would normally expect with a compliance check. This decision was going to be made on the basis of the documents alone, so we needed to make sure we understood what concern the Home Office might have with how these sponsored workers were paid and address it with the document submission.
Our second concern was that there were ~170 sponsored workers, mostly paid hourly and all sponsored from different dates, so there were going to be a lot of documents and a high level of variance between the documents. Workers employed before 4 April 2024 were going to have a different minimum salary requirement to meet for those hired before 23 July 2025 and those hired more recently. We also did not know if those who have been hired more recently have been sponsored from before 4 Apri 2024.
Our investigation and advice:
We know that the Home Office now have HMRC intelligence of earnings and periods where workers are paid under the minimum requirement their visa or periods of non-payment, so we reviewed each employee’s payments in line with their individual requirements to remain compliant with their Skilled Worker visas. It’s complicated when each employee is working different hours per month, but we were confident after our investigation that each worker had been paid at least the minimum for their visa depending on the commencement of their Skilled Worker visas, their SOC code, and considering deductions being made to their pay at source. It may have appeared recently that some workers were being paid under the minimum threshold, but over the year, they had earned well-above the minimum.
The outcome
We supported Cherish UK by providing our findings of our review and some guidance as to what the Home Office might have suspected being non-compliant and how to address this in the submission. Over 35 emails were sent to provide these supporting documents (given a 25MB file limit) and on receipt, the Home Office responded to confirm no further action would be taken. Great news for a really diligent sponsor doing great work for local communities throughout the North West of England.
The client was understandably relieved:
"I recommend getting an expert like Oliver to assist you if (like us) a big part of your business depends upon it!— 
feeling relieved. "
Do you need support?
Our team have been supporting companies and organisations prepare for UKVI Inspections for a long time. We have prevented many organisations from losing their sponsor licences and all of their sponsored workers. The Home Office act quickly and often without much investigation, so contact us to understand how you can be prepared and how to respond once the UKVI make contact.
