Sponsor licence reporting: questions people actually ask

The day you become aware of the event — not the day the event happened, and not the day it reached the Level 1 User. The sponsor is aware when any responsible person is. A line manager who knew three weeks ago started your clock three weeks ago.

No — ‘working day’ excludes weekends and bank holidays (England and Wales, per the guidance glossary). Our free calculator excludes weekends only, so where a bank holiday falls in the window the true deadline is later than the date we show. The date we show is therefore always safe, never late.

Anything about a worker is 10 working days: non-attendance, unauthorised absence, early termination, significant changes to role, salary or location. Anything about the sponsor is 20: name, ownership, size classification, key personnel, address.

Some changes to role, salary or location need a new certificate rather than a report. Check which before assuming a report covers it — this is one of the more common and more expensive misreadings.

In practice, the right-to-work check evidence — and specifically its date. A check dated after the employment start date does not establish the statutory excuse, and no amount of later paperwork repairs it.

Yes, and it is visible without anyone visiting your office. Salary-to-payroll reconciliation is a check that can be made from records alone. Reconcile it yourself before it is reconciled for you.

It is one of the documented ways licences are lost. Reporting inside the window with no record of the awareness date leaves you unable to show it was in time. Log the awareness date at the moment it happens, not at the moment you report.

The clock does not pause. A single Level 1 User with no deputy is on the failure list for exactly this reason. The licence must maintain an Authorising Officer, a Key Contact and at least one Level 1 User — and in practice you want a deputy who can act inside 10 working days.

Action is graded: guidance, a downgrade to a B-rating with a chargeable and public action plan, suspension, or revocation. Revocation curtails the permission of the workers you already sponsor, so the cost lands on them too. The outcome for a specific breach is a Home Office decision and we do not predict it.

Appendix D sets the retention requirements per document type. The practical failure is not retention length but early disposal — recruitment evidence discarded after probation, so the hire cannot be justified at a visit years later.

No. This site and our pack are internal compliance documentation. They are not legal advice and not an immigration service within the meaning of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 — nothing here advises on any individual’s immigration status or application. For case-specific questions, take regulated immigration advice.

The working-day arithmetic is the same function. What the calculator cannot do is give you the Appendix D file structure, the per-worker completeness matrix, the reporting calendar, the duties matrix or the mock-audit walkthrough. That is the €490 pack.