If your care home, hotel or business sponsors overseas workers, you hold a UKVI sponsor licence — and with it a set of continuous record-keeping, reporting and monitoring duties a Home Office compliance visit can test at any time. SponsorGuard keeps that evidence complete, current and one press away: the right-to-work vault, the reporting-deadline tracker, per-pay-period salary monitoring and a sponsored-worker register — so the file is ready before the caseworker asks. Compliance software, not immigration advice.
Holding a sponsor licence has always carried duties — but enforcement has changed shape. Salary compliance is now judged pay period by pay period, UKVI cross-references your live HMRC payroll data, and the checks that keep a workforce legal are extending beyond permanent employees. The exposure is criminal as well as financial. The firms that keep their evidence in order have nothing to fear from a visit; the firms that keep it in inboxes and spreadsheets carry the risk every day.
Sponsor salary compliance is now assessed for each pay period, and UKVI cross-references live HMRC PAYE/RTI data — so a licence can be actioned on a data anomaly without a site visit. Paying a sponsored worker below the salary on their Certificate of Sponsorship is a mandatory ground for revoking the licence.
The civil penalty for employing an illegal worker is up to £60,000 per worker (£45,000 first breach, £60,000 for a repeat — Home Office Code of Practice, 13 Feb 2024). Knowingly employing someone without the right to work is a criminal offence carrying up to five years' imprisonment (Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, s.21, as amended).
The duty to carry out right-to-work checks is being extended to casual, gig and sub-contractor arrangements (SI 2026/683) — bringing whole categories of worker inside the checking regime that many employers previously treated as outside it. More people to check, more records to keep, more surface for a visit to test.
Built around the licence duties a UKVI compliance visit tests — so what a caseworker may ask for is exactly what the system already holds, kept current between visits rather than reconstructed the week before one.
A dated, retained record of every right-to-work check — permanent staff and, as the rules widen from 1 October 2026, casual, gig and sub-contractor arrangements too. The evidence of a compliant check, filed against the worker, ready to produce on request.
The sponsor reporting duties run to the clock — the 10-day and 20-day SMS reporting windows for changes to a sponsored worker's circumstances. SponsorGuard tracks each open duty, counts down the deadline and reminds you before it lapses, so a reportable change never quietly becomes a missed one.
Since April 2026 salary is judged pay period by pay period against the Certificate of Sponsorship. SponsorGuard monitors each sponsored worker's pay against their CoS figure every period and flags a shortfall early — before an underpayment against the live HMRC feed becomes a revocation ground.
One register of every sponsored worker, their role and their permission — with visa-expiry tracking that surfaces the dates well ahead, so no one keeps working past their leave and no renewal is left to the last week.
A running self-assessment against the licence duties that gives you a readiness score and a clear list of what's missing or out of date — the mock compliance visit you run on yourself, so the real one holds no surprises.
Short, quiz-checked modules for the staff who carry these responsibilities — how a right-to-work check is done and recorded, what triggers an SMS report, and the record-keeping a sponsor licence expects — with completion certificates and team progress tracking.
SponsorGuard is built for the employers who hold a sponsor licence without a dedicated immigration-compliance team — the care providers, hospitality operators and small businesses that carry the full weight of the sponsor duties but can't justify a compliance officer to keep the evidence in order. It sits alongside your HR and payroll and keeps the visit-readiness file current, so a Home Office compliance visit finds a system, not a scramble.
SponsorGuard provides compliance software and record-keeping tools; it is not a law firm or an immigration adviser and does not provide legal or immigration advice, which are regulated activities. The vault, trackers, monitoring, register, readiness score and training are designed to help you organise and evidence your obligations as a UKVI licensed sponsor and your right-to-work checking duties — they support, but do not replace, your organisation's own legal responsibilities and any professional immigration advice you may need.