With the first of the many changes under the anticipated Employment Rights Act 2025 in force, the recent changes that have taken place to the Immigration Rules in the UK have gone under the radar. However, there continues to be a trend towards stricter entry requirements, and greater compliance obligations upon employers.
6 March 2026
1) Duty to Inform Sponsored Workers of their Employment Rights
This is now a specific obligation under the Immigration Rules and is reflected in the recordkeeping requirement in Appendix D to the Rules. This requires employers to retain evidence that workers have been made aware of those rights – e.g. through a contract, handbook or onboarding materials/training. Most sponsored workers will already be complying with this obligation, but must be made aware of the additional record keeping requirements. If this cannot be demonstrated on an inspection, this may be deemed a sponsor duty breach, resulting in the temporary or permanent revocation of your licence.
Employers must therefore ensure that sponsored workers are kept up to date with any new rights they may have (e.g. under the Employment Rights Act 2025) as and when they occur. By simply ensuring contracts and policies remain up to date, and these are regularly communicated via a portal/ email, the obligation should not be onerous.
2) Paid breaks to be included in Sponsored Workers working weekly hours
The Home Office has clarified that paid breaks must be included in a worker’s weekly hours, as they form part of a worker’s paid working time. Therefore, the annual salary and hourly rate must be assessed on the total paid hours, included paid rest breaks. Unpaid breaks remain excluded as they are not renumerated working time. Therefore, sponsors must ensure that paid breaks are factored in when stating a salary on the Certificate of Sponsorship – highlighting the importance of ensuring the “hourly” going rate is met, not just the “annual salary” going rate.
3) Change of terminology to ‘eligible role’ from ‘genuine vacancy’
The longstanding concept of a “genuine vacancy” has been replaced by the term “eligible role”. This marks a formalisation towards not simply demonstrating a role exists, but to a broader assessment as to whether the role is appropriate, skilled and credible – i.e. you must justify why the role exists and requires a sponsored worker. There must be a genuine need for the role in that particular organisation, rather than an individual being shoe-horned into a vacancy designed to meet the requirements of the rules.
4) Global Business Mobility Secondment Worker – reduction in required overseas employment length
The overseas employment eligibility has been reduced from 12 months to 6 months for all Certificates of Sponsorship issued on or after 8 April 2026 under this route, making it easier to post workers abroad at short notice and for secondments. This is still subject to the same additional eligibility requirements, including a genuine vacancy in the UK.
5) Authorising Officer duties
Sponsorship guidance now requires the AO to take active responsibility for ensuring the organisation understands and complies with its sponsor duties and MUST read all relevant sponsor guidance and compliance documents – rather than previously being able to delegate this to other designated officers under the licence (e.g. Level One users who tend to actively manage the licence on a day to day basis).
The guidance makes it clear that this should be done as soon as they are published, and any business procedures and processes amended accordingly. Failure to do so may be treated as a compliance failure, risking the licence being revoked or temporarily downgraded – preventing new sponsorship/ sponsorship renewals.
This adds weight behind the requirement for the AO to log in to the licence at least once a month to ensure everything is up to date and all information under the licence is accurate. It is another bolstering of the sponsor compliance requirements.
6) Non-compliance with reporting duties = potential revocation of licence
In a further move to strengthen compliance, failure to update systems and report changes in the Sponsor Management System (SMS) such as change of address, change of ownership structure, and change or sponsored worker’s circumstances can now result in suspension/ revocation of licence on the basis of reasonable suspicion of non-compliance, rather than the previous proven pattern of non-compliance. Therefore, inadvertent errors will have potentially large consequences.
Potential autumn and 2027 changes
The move towards “earned settlement” for ILR rather than simply being granted on time in the UK looks more and more certain. Although not yet confirmed, it is likely the requirement to be in the UK for at least 10 years before being eligible to apply for ILR will come into effect in autumn 2026. It is unclear whether these changes will be applied retrospectively to those already in the UK or not – therefore anyone eligible should apply sooner rather than later if they wish.
From 26 March 2027, the English Language requirement for most ILR applications will be stricter – increasing to B2 (“upper intermediate”) from B1 (“intermediate”) for speaking and listening.
Any organization that relies on the sponsorship system should ensure that they understand the changes to the rules, and it is advisable to ensure a compliance audit is undertaken to avoid risk of suspension/revocation of the licence. Where the AO is not in the habit of being actively engaged with the sponsorship of employees, they should ensure their duties are fully understood.
Osborne & Wise can assist employers in conducting an audit to ensure that their processes and procedures are fully compliant and actively integrated into the organisation’s day-to-day HR practices.