Most employers receive an A-rated Sponsor Licence when their application is approved.
That is the position you want to keep.
An A-rating means the organisation can use its Sponsor Licence normally, including assigning Certificates of Sponsorship to eligible new workers.
A B-rating is rather different.
It means the Home Office has identified compliance concerns serious enough that it is no longer satisfied the organisation should continue operating with its normal A-rating, but not necessarily so serious that the Sponsor Licence should immediately be suspended or revoked.
In effect, the Home Office is saying:
There is a problem. We are giving you an opportunity to put it right.
That opportunity comes through a Sponsor Action Plan.
And it should be taken seriously.
A B-rating is not a comfortable alternative version of a Sponsor Licence. It is a temporary position, with restrictions on sponsorship and a limited period in which the business needs to demonstrate that the problems have been corrected.
If it succeeds, the A-rating can be restored.
If it does not, the Sponsor Licence can be revoked.
So if your business has received a proposed downgrade or has already been B-rated, this is not something to leave sitting in the inbox while somebody decides who should deal with it.
What is an A-rated Sponsor Licence?
An A-rating is the normal rating given to an organisation when its Sponsor Licence application is approved.
The Home Office grants the licence on the basis that the organisation has appropriate systems in place to meet its sponsor duties and is suitable to operate as a licensed sponsor.
For most Worker sponsors, the rating will therefore begin as:
A-rated
An A-rated sponsor can normally use the Sponsor Management System to carry out the sponsorship activities available under its licence, including assigning Certificates of Sponsorship where the relevant requirements are met.
The organisation will also appear on the published Register of Licensed Sponsors.
But an A-rating is not a permanent badge of approval.
The organisation must continue meeting its sponsor duties.
If the Home Office later identifies compliance problems, the rating can change.
What is a B-rated Sponsor Licence?
A B-rating means the Home Office has downgraded the organisation because of concerns about its sponsorship compliance.
The important word here is:
downgraded
For ordinary Worker sponsors, businesses do not normally apply for a Sponsor Licence and receive a B-rating as the standard outcome.
If the Home Office is not satisfied that a new applicant can achieve the required standard, it can refuse the Sponsor Licence application.
The B-rating generally becomes relevant after a licence has already been granted.
The business had an A-rating.
Problems were subsequently identified.
The Home Office decided that those problems could potentially be corrected through an action plan.
The licence was therefore downgraded.
Is a B-rated Sponsor Licence the same as suspension?
No.
They are different forms of Home Office action.
A B-rating generally deals with compliance failings that the Home Office considers capable of being corrected through a structured action plan.
Suspension is more serious.
Where the Home Office identifies more significant concerns, it can suspend the Sponsor Licence while deciding what further action should be taken.
There is also no requirement for the Home Office to B-rate an organisation before suspending or revoking its licence.
You should therefore not think of the process as:
A-rating → B-rating → suspension → revocation
with every business travelling through each stage in that order.
That is not how it works.
Depending on the seriousness of the problem, the Home Office can move directly to more serious action.
Why can a Sponsor Licence be downgraded?
A downgrade can happen where the Home Office considers that the organisation is failing to meet its sponsor duties but the problems are relatively minor and capable of correction.
The circumstances depend on what the Home Office has found.
Examples can include weaknesses involving:
- record keeping;
- HR systems;
- sponsored worker monitoring;
- reporting;
- control over the Sponsor Management System;
- key personnel;
- communication between different parts of the organisation; or
- information the sponsor was required to provide.
The issue is not necessarily one spectacular breach.
Sometimes the problem is a collection of smaller failures.
One missing record might be explainable.
One missed report might be correctable.
But if UKVI looks across the organisation and repeatedly finds that nobody appears to know who is responsible for sponsorship compliance, the overall picture becomes more concerning.
How does the Home Office discover compliance problems?
There are several ways.
A common route is a Home Office compliance visit.
UKVI may inspect the organisation’s records, systems and sponsored workers and identify areas where the business is not meeting its duties.
Concerns can also arise from information already held by the Home Office, reporting discrepancies, intelligence, information from other government departments or other compliance activity.
The Home Office does not necessarily need to wait until the Sponsor Licence reaches a renewal date.
For most Worker sponsors, routine four-year renewal is no longer part of the system anyway.
Compliance continues throughout the life of the licence.
Will the Home Office tell you before downgrading the licence?
Where the Home Office is considering downgrading an A-rated licence to a B-rating under the ordinary downgrade process, it will normally write to the sponsor explaining the proposed action and the reasons for it.
The sponsor is generally given 20 working days from the date of the letter to respond in writing.
That response matters.
The organisation can provide statements, explanations and supporting evidence addressing the concerns raised.
This is an important stage because the downgrade may still be only proposed.
The Home Office has identified concerns, but the sponsor has an opportunity to respond before the final decision is made.
Do not treat the 20 working days casually
Twenty working days sounds reasonably generous when you first read it.
It can disappear remarkably quickly.
The business may need to:
- identify every allegation;
- locate old HR records;
- speak to managers;
- check payroll;
- review sponsored workers;
- download SMS information;
- investigate historical events;
- identify what actually happened;
- correct ongoing systems;
- prepare supporting evidence;
- and draft a proper response.
If several workers or multiple compliance issues are involved, this can become substantial work.
The first few days should therefore be used to understand the case, not to put the letter somewhere safe and revisit it in week three.
What should you do when you receive a proposed B-rating?
Start with the Home Office letter.
Do not immediately begin writing a lengthy explanation.
First identify every individual concern.
For each allegation, establish:
- What does the Home Office say happened?
- Is that factually correct?
- What evidence does the business hold?
- Was there actually a sponsorship breach?
- Has the issue already been corrected?
- Is the problem isolated or does it reveal a wider systems failure?
That last question is particularly important.
If one salary change was missed because payroll never informs the Level 1 User about sponsored workers, simply correcting that employee’s SMS record does not necessarily solve the underlying problem.
The process needs fixing too.
Should you admit every allegation?
No.
You should establish what actually happened.
If the Home Office has misunderstood something and the business has evidence demonstrating that, it should explain the position clearly.
Equally, if there genuinely was a compliance failure, pretending otherwise is rarely a sensible strategy.
The response needs to distinguish between:
- incorrect allegations
- issues requiring explanation, and
- genuine failings requiring correction.
A strong response is not necessarily one that says:
We did absolutely nothing wrong.
Sometimes a stronger response is:
This specific failure occurred. Here is why it happened, here is the evidence showing its scope, here is what we have already done to correct it, and here is the system now in place to prevent it happening again.
That is a much more credible position where the evidence supports it.
What happens if the Home Office decides to downgrade the licence?
If the Home Office proceeds with the downgrade, it will notify the sponsor.
The B-rating takes effect from the date of the decision letter.
The business will then need to enter into a Sponsor Action Plan if it wants to retain the licence and return to an A-rating.
This is not optional if the business wants to continue as a licensed sponsor.
The action plan is the route back to normal sponsorship.
What is a Sponsor Action Plan?
A Sponsor Action Plan is a formal set of measures imposed by UKVI telling the organisation what it needs to improve.
The requirements depend on the compliance failures identified.
For example, the action plan may require improvements to:
- record keeping;
- sponsored worker monitoring;
- reporting procedures;
- control over people assigning Certificates of Sponsorship;
- communication between branches;
- HR processes; or
- other sponsorship systems.
It is therefore not simply a generic checklist sent to every B-rated sponsor.
The plan should address the particular areas in which UKVI believes the organisation has failed.
How much does a Sponsor Action Plan cost?
The current Home Office fee is:
£1,579
That is a substantial amount.
And importantly, paying the £1,579 does not buy an A-rating.
It pays for the action plan process.
The organisation still needs to complete the required improvements successfully.
So the equation is not:
£1,579 = A-rating restored
It is:
£1,579 + actually fixing the compliance problems = possibility of A-rating being restored
The second part is considerably more important.
How long do you have to pay for the action plan?
The sponsor normally has 10 working days to accept the action plan and pay the required fee after UKVI notifies it of the B-rating and requests payment.
Payment is made through the relevant function in the Sponsor Management System.
If the sponsor accepts and pays within the required period, it remains licensed while completing the action plan.
If it ignores the request, the consequences are much more serious.
What happens if you do not pay the Sponsor Action Plan fee?
If the sponsor simply does nothing and fails to pay within the required period, the Home Office can revoke the Sponsor Licence.
There is a separate option for an organisation that is not sponsoring any workers and wishes to surrender its licence.
But an employer that wants to retain its Sponsor Licence cannot simply refuse the action plan and continue operating normally.
A B-rating is a transitional compliance status.
The business either follows the process towards restoring its A-rating or risks losing the licence.
How long does a Sponsor Action Plan last?
Current Sponsor Guidance provides for action plans to run for a fixed period of:
3 months
This is important because older explanations online sometimes describe the period less precisely.
The current guidance is clear that action plans are set for three months.
The Home Office considers this sufficient time for the sponsor to put right the compliance problems identified.
Three months may sound like plenty of time.
Again, it depends on the problem.
If the organisation needs to overhaul HR systems across several branches, train staff, correct worker records and implement new reporting procedures, those three months need to be used properly.
Can you ask the Home Office to check you earlier?
Potentially, yes.
A sponsor can request a compliance check before the end of the three-month action plan period.
But this should not be done simply because the business wants the matter over with.
The current guidance specifically indicates that an earlier check should only be requested where the sponsor is certain it has already met all the requirements of the action plan.
Once you invite UKVI back in, you want the answer to every relevant question to be:
done.
Not:
we were planning to finish that next Tuesday.
Can a B-rated sponsor issue Certificates of Sponsorship?
This is one of the most important practical consequences of being B-rated.
A B-rated sponsor cannot normally assign a CoS to sponsor a new worker.
That can seriously affect recruitment plans.
Suppose the company has:
three vacancies;
two overseas candidates waiting;
and another employee whose Graduate visa expires shortly.
A B-rating can suddenly interrupt the entire recruitment plan.
This is why Sponsor Licence compliance is not merely an HR administrative issue.
It can directly affect the company’s ability to recruit.
Can a B-rated sponsor extend an existing sponsored worker?
Potentially, yes.
The Home Office allows a B-rated sponsor to assign a CoS to a worker it was already sponsoring before the licence was downgraded where the worker needs, and is eligible, to apply for permission to stay.
UKVI determines the number of Certificates of Sponsorship available for these extension applications during the action plan period.
This is an important distinction.
Existing sponsored worker needing an extension
Potentially possible.
Brand-new worker the business wants to sponsor
Not while the sponsor remains B-rated.
What if we already offered somebody a sponsored job?
That can create a difficult commercial situation.
If the worker has not yet been sponsored and the business becomes B-rated, the organisation may be unable to assign the CoS needed for the new Skilled Worker application.
The employer may then need to consider:
- the worker’s existing immigration status;
- when their current permission expires;
- whether a CoS has already been assigned;
- whether the person can lawfully continue working;
- the expected action plan timetable; and
- what alternative options may exist.
This is why businesses with active sponsored recruitment should respond to downgrade action quickly.
The compliance issue can affect people who had nothing to do with the original breach.
Can you add another sponsorship route while B-rated?
No, not during the action plan period.
Current guidance prevents a B-rated sponsor from adding branches or a new route to its licence while subject to the action plan.
The business therefore operates under restrictions until the Home Office is satisfied that the required improvements have been made.
What happens at the end of the Sponsor Action Plan?
UKVI carries out further compliance checks.
There are broadly three possible outcomes.
Outcome 1: A-rating restored
This is the result the business wants.
The sponsor has completed the requirements of the action plan and UKVI has no further concerns requiring action.
The licence is restored to an A-rating.
The Home Office can also review the organisation’s CoS allocation so normal sponsorship activity can resume where appropriate.
Outcome 2: Another compliance problem is identified
UKVI may discover another area of non-compliance that was not covered by the original action plan.
Where that new problem is suitable for B-rating rather than immediate suspension or revocation, a second action plan can be required.
And yes, there is another fee.
Outcome 3: Action plan failed
If the sponsor has not completed the requirements of the action plan, or more serious compliance problems are identified, the Sponsor Licence can be revoked.
That is why the three-month period should be treated as a remediation project rather than a waiting period.
Can you have more than one Sponsor Action Plan?
Yes, but there is a limit.
Under the current Sponsor Guidance, a sponsor can only be B-rated and subject to an action plan:
twice during a rolling four-year period
If the sponsor has already been B-rated twice within that period and the Home Office later finds that the organisation again meets the criteria for downgrade, the licence will be revoked.
There is therefore no endless cycle of:
B-rating → fix it → A-rating → B-rating → fix it → A-rating → repeat forever.
At some point, repeated failure demonstrates that the organisation is not operating sponsorship consistently enough.
Does a second Sponsor Action Plan cost again?
Yes.
If another action plan is required, another action plan fee is payable.
At the current rate, that means another:
£1,579
The financial cost of repeated compliance problems can therefore accumulate before considering professional costs, management time, recruitment disruption and the potential consequences for sponsored workers.
Preventing the problem is considerably cheaper.
Can the Home Office revoke the licence instead of offering a B-rating?
Yes.
This is extremely important.
A business cannot demand:
“Give us a B-rating and let us fix it.”
The Home Office decides what compliance action is appropriate.
B-rating is generally used for relatively minor compliance failures that UKVI considers capable of correction.
More serious breaches can lead to suspension or revocation.
Examples of more serious concerns can include significant or systematic failures, loss of eligibility or suitability, serious threats to immigration control or other conduct that the Home Office considers sufficiently serious.
So the existence of the B-rating system should not create false reassurance.
Not every compliance problem gets an action plan.
Can a suspended Sponsor Licence later become B-rated?
Yes.
After considering a suspension case, the Home Office can decide not to revoke the Sponsor Licence but reinstate it with a B-rating.
The organisation would then need to comply with a Sponsor Action Plan.
This can happen where UKVI remains concerned about compliance but considers that the remaining problems can be corrected.
The business has therefore avoided revocation, but it has not yet returned to normal sponsorship.
There is still work to do.
Is there another 20-working-day response period after suspension?
Not necessarily.
Where a licence is reinstated from suspension with a B-rating, the sponsor is not normally given another 20-working-day representation period specifically against that B-rating because the representation process has already taken place during the suspension.
This is another reason why a suspension response needs to address the Home Office’s concerns comprehensively.
The outcome may not simply be:
revoked
or
fully reinstated.
There can be a middle position.
What happens to existing sponsored workers while the business is B-rated?
A B-rating does not automatically cancel every sponsored worker’s visa.
The Sponsor Licence continues to exist while the organisation complies with the action plan process.
Existing sponsored workers can therefore generally continue working subject to their existing immigration permission and the employer continuing to comply with the sponsorship requirements.
However, the employer needs to be particularly careful during this period.
The Home Office will already have identified compliance weaknesses.
This is not the moment for another missed report, undocumented salary change or casual approach to the SMS.
Will employees know the company is B-rated?
Sponsor ratings appear on the published Register of Licensed Sponsors.
A downgrade can therefore become visible externally.
That may matter commercially, particularly for businesses actively recruiting international workers.
A prospective candidate who checks the register may see that the organisation is B-rated.
That is another reason why restoring the A-rating promptly matters beyond the technical immigration consequences.
What should a business do during the three-month action plan?
The answer depends on the action plan, but I would approach it as a structured compliance project.
Start by turning every Home Office requirement into an individual action.
For each one, identify:
- what needs changing
- who is responsible
- what evidence will demonstrate completion, and
- when it will be finished.
Do not wait until month three to gather the evidence.
Create the evidence as the improvements are made.
If HR staff receive sponsorship training, retain evidence.
If a new reporting process is introduced, document it.
If sponsored worker files are corrected, keep a record of the review.
If responsibility between HR and payroll changes, document the new process.
By the time UKVI checks again, the organisation should be able to demonstrate not merely that somebody says the problem has been fixed, but how it was fixed.
Review every sponsored worker, not just the worker who caused the problem
This is one of the most important things I would do.
Suppose the downgrade arose because UKVI found incorrect salary records for one sponsored worker.
Do not only review that worker.
Review all sponsored workers.
If the problem came from a payroll communication failure, there may be others.
Similarly, if one employee’s work location was not reported, check everybody’s work location.
If one leaver was not reported, check all sponsored workers who have left.
If one file is missing Appendix D records, check all worker files.
The Home Office action plan may focus on a specific failure.
The business should look for the system behind the failure.
Review the Sponsor Management System
A B-rating is also a good reason to carry out a full SMS review.
Check:
- Authorising Officer;
- Key Contact;
- Level 1 Users;
- organisation details;
- addresses;
- branches;
- sponsored workers;
- reporting history;
- CoS allocations; and
- outstanding sponsorship activity.
Compare that information with HR, payroll and Companies House records where relevant.
The goal is simple:
What the Home Office sees should match the business that actually exists.
Review your HR systems
This is where many action plans are won or lost.
The business may correct the historical problem but fail to demonstrate that the system has changed.
Suppose the issue was missed employee departures.
The answer should not merely be:
“We have now reported the employee.”
The stronger response is to create a leaver process that asks:
Is this employee sponsored?
If yes:
Who reports the departure?
By when?
Who checks that it was completed?
Now the individual mistake has become a system improvement.
That is what a compliance remediation exercise should achieve.
Review payroll communication
Payroll and sponsorship need to speak to each other.
If the payroll team changes a sponsored employee’s salary without whoever manages the Sponsor Licence knowing about it, there is a compliance gap.
The same applies to:
- reduced hours;
- unpaid leave;
- long-term absence;
- maternity arrangements;
- changes in employment; and
- termination.
The person operating the SMS cannot report information they never receive.
A good action plan therefore often involves improving communication between departments rather than simply training one Level 1 User.
Train the people who actually need training
Sending everybody in the company on a three-hour immigration seminar is not necessarily useful.
Identify who affects sponsorship.
That might include:
- Authorising Officer;
- Level 1 Users;
- HR;
- payroll;
- recruitment;
- line managers; and
- senior management.
They do not all need the same level of knowledge.
A line manager does not need to know how to assign a Defined CoS.
They may, however, need to know that changing a sponsored employee’s job duties should be checked before the change is implemented.
Practical training is more useful than turning everybody into part-time immigration lawyers.
Do not create policies nobody follows
A common reaction to compliance action is to produce lots of policies.
Policies are useful.
But UKVI is interested in whether the systems actually operate.
There is little value in writing:
“Sponsored worker files will be audited monthly by the Compliance Manager.”
if there is no Compliance Manager and nobody has ever audited them.
Create processes the organisation can realistically maintain.
A small company sponsoring two workers may need a simple but disciplined system.
A company sponsoring 200 workers across multiple sites will need something more substantial.
The correct system is the one that actually works for the organisation while meeting its sponsorship duties.
Can professional help make a difference with a B-rating?
This is one of the situations where professional involvement can be particularly valuable.
The business is no longer preparing for a theoretical compliance risk.
The Home Office has already identified concerns.
There are deadlines.
There are restrictions.
There may be sponsored workers and recruitment plans affected.
And failure can ultimately lead to revocation.
A proper review can help separate:
what the Home Office alleges
from
what actually happened
and then identify:
- what needs explaining
- what needs evidencing
- what needs correcting, and
- what needs changing permanently.
That is very different from simply filling in an online form.
Can you manage a Sponsor Action Plan yourself?
Yes.
There is no requirement that an employer appoints a professional representative simply because its licence has been downgraded.
But this is also one of the points where I would seriously question whether saving professional fees should be the main priority.
The business already has a compliance finding against it.
It has paid, or is about to pay, £1,579 for the action plan.
It cannot normally sponsor new workers while B-rated.
Its existing sponsored workforce may depend on the licence.
And if the action plan fails, revocation becomes a real possibility.
This is no longer the best stage for learning Sponsor Licence compliance by trial and error.
Where the business has the necessary internal expertise, it may be able to manage the process itself.
Where it does not, getting the position reviewed properly can be considerably more cost-effective than trying to repair a failed action plan afterwards.
What if we think the Home Office is wrong?
Then the response should say so, properly.
If the Home Office is proposing to downgrade the licence and the business has evidence showing that the alleged failure did not occur, that evidence should be presented clearly within the response period.
Do not confuse being cooperative with agreeing to something that is factually incorrect.
Equally, do not confuse being defensive with being persuasive.
A ten-page angry letter does not become stronger because it contains more adjectives.
The response should deal with the evidence.
What happened?
What do the records show?
What requirement applies?
Why is the Home Office’s conclusion incorrect?
Or, where a failure did occur, what has been done about it?
That is the substance that matters.
A B-rating is a warning, but also an opportunity
Nobody wants their Sponsor Licence downgraded.
But there is an important distinction between a B-rating and revocation.
A B-rating means the Home Office has concluded that the organisation can potentially correct the identified problems.
That opportunity should be used properly.
A well-managed action plan can do more than restore the A-rating.
It can leave the business with stronger:
HR systems;
reporting processes;
worker records;
SMS controls;
management oversight;
and sponsorship knowledge.
In other words, the aim should not merely be:
Get through the next UKVI check.
It should be:
Make sure we do not end up here again.
Need help with a proposed downgrade or Sponsor Action Plan?
If your organisation has received a Home Office letter proposing to downgrade its Sponsor Licence, the first priority should be to understand exactly what UKVI has alleged and the deadline for responding.
We can review the Home Office concerns against the organisation’s sponsorship records, HR systems, sponsored workers and supporting evidence before deciding how the response should be approached.
If the licence has already been downgraded and a Sponsor Action Plan has been issued, the focus changes to remediation.
That means identifying what UKVI requires, correcting the underlying systems, reviewing whether the same problems affect other sponsored workers and making sure the organisation can evidence the improvements when the Home Office checks again.
You can deal with a B-rating internally.
But by the time the Home Office has formally downgraded a Sponsor Licence, the potential cost of getting the next stage wrong is considerably greater than it was when the licence was first granted.
The objective is straightforward:
understand the problem, fix the problem, prove the problem has been fixed, and get the Sponsor Licence back to an A-rating.
Preferably without giving UKVI a new problem to look at while you are doing it.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is an A-rated Sponsor Licence?
An A-rated Sponsor Licence is the standard rating normally given when a Sponsor Licence is granted. It allows the organisation to carry out normal sponsorship activities, including assigning Certificates of Sponsorship to eligible new workers. The sponsor must continue meeting its duties to retain the A-rating throughout the life of the licence.
2. What does a B-rated Sponsor Licence mean?
A B-rated Sponsor Licence means the Home Office has identified compliance problems and downgraded the organisation from its A-rating. The licence has not necessarily been revoked or suspended, but the sponsor must address the identified problems through a Sponsor Action Plan if it wants to restore its A-rating and continue sponsoring normally.
3. Can a B-rated sponsor still sponsor new workers?
Generally, no. A B-rated sponsor cannot normally assign Certificates of Sponsorship to new workers while subject to a Sponsor Action Plan. There are limited provisions for existing sponsored workers who need to extend their permission. This restriction can therefore have an immediate impact on an employer’s international recruitment plans.
4. How much does a Sponsor Action Plan cost?
The current Home Office fee for a Sponsor Action Plan is £1,579. Paying the fee does not automatically restore the organisation’s A-rating. The sponsor must complete the requirements contained within the action plan and satisfy the Home Office that the identified compliance problems have been properly addressed.
5. How long does a Sponsor Action Plan last?
Under the current Sponsor Guidance, a Sponsor Action Plan lasts for three months. During this period, the organisation needs to make the improvements required by the Home Office and retain evidence showing what has been done. UKVI can then conduct further compliance checks before deciding whether to restore the A-rating.
6. Can a B-rated Sponsor Licence be restored to an A-rating?
Yes. If the organisation successfully completes its Sponsor Action Plan and satisfies the Home Office that the relevant compliance problems have been corrected, its Sponsor Licence can be restored to an A-rating. The business should address both the individual breaches identified and any underlying HR or compliance systems that caused them.
7. What happens if a Sponsor Action Plan is not completed?
Failure to comply with the Sponsor Action Plan can ultimately result in the Sponsor Licence being revoked. This can have serious consequences for the organisation and its sponsored workers. Employers should therefore treat the action plan as a formal compliance remediation process rather than simply waiting for the three-month period to expire.
8. Can a business receive more than one Sponsor Action Plan?
Yes, but there are limits. Under the current Sponsor Guidance, an organisation can normally be B-rated and subject to an action plan no more than twice within a rolling four-year period. Further compliance failures that would otherwise justify another downgrade can therefore place the Sponsor Licence at risk of revocation.
9. Is a B-rated Sponsor Licence the same as a suspended licence?
No. A B-rating and suspension are different forms of Home Office compliance action. A B-rating usually provides an opportunity to correct specified compliance problems through an action plan. Suspension can arise where more serious concerns exist. The Home Office does not have to B-rate a sponsor before taking suspension or revocation action.
10. Can I deal with a Sponsor Action Plan without professional help?
An employer can manage a Sponsor Action Plan itself, but by this stage the Home Office has already identified compliance concerns and failure can put the licence at risk. Professional support can help assess the allegations, review the evidence, correct wider compliance weaknesses and prepare the organisation for the Home Office’s follow-up checks.