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Four weeks' notice of a Home Office visit, and eight years of gaps in the files
An IT consultancy with eight sponsored workers had four weeks before a Home Office compliance visit, and HR files that had not been kept properly for years.
Sponsor Licence Compliance & Audit
The email said the Home Office would visit on 8 April and would interview two sponsored workers for half an hour each, passports and payslips in hand. The director had not kept HR files properly for the better part of a decade.
At a glance
- Client: IT consultancy
- Sponsored workers: Eight
- Trigger: Home Office notification of a compliance visit scheduled for 8 April 2026
- The problem: HR files not properly maintained for seven to eight years
- Instructed: 17 March 2026, three weeks before the visit
How they found us
The director called us, and instructed us eight days later.
The challenge
- The Home Office had given a date and stated it would interview two sponsored workers for thirty minutes each, requiring passports and recent payslips.
- The director's records had not been properly maintained for seven to eight years.
- Eight people's right to work in the UK depended on the licence surviving.
- He had roughly four weeks.
What we did
- Audited against the visit, not against a template. The compliance review was scoped to find and fix the gaps the Home Office would look for on the day.
- Installed the compliance system. Our HR compliance software was set up and provided at no additional cost as part of the audit, so the record-keeping problem would not recur after the visit.
- Said no to the shortcut. The client asked whether the software could backdate six to twelve months of records. The answer was no. He would have to reconstruct those records himself, with us advising on how, because the alternative is a falsified record, which is worse than a gap.
- Prepared for the interviews. Two sponsored workers were to be interviewed, so preparation covered them as well as the paperwork.
Why it matters
Most sponsors who fail a compliance visit are not cheating. They are busy, they let the filing slide, and nobody told them the standard until an inspector arrived. Four weeks is enough time to fix a great deal of it, if you know what is actually being checked.