High Court rules sponsor should have been given chance to make representations before licence revocation

The High Court in R (TJ Trading Express Limited) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 1274 (Admin) held that before revoking the sponsor’s licence for non-compliance, the Home Office should have given the business an opportunity to make representations in response to its allegations.

Background

The claimant is a company that runs a petrol station and shop which was granted a Skilled Worker licence on 27 September 2022. The company’s director is Mr Jayaganth Ragunathan, who was also a Level 1 user, meaning he was authorised to take actions in respect of the company’s licence such as assigning a certificate of sponsorship.

On 15 November 2023, Mr Ragunathan assigned a certification of sponsorship for the role of a petrol station manager to a Mr Sivalingam, who was his brother-in-law. In breach of the relevant guidance, the nature of their relationship was not communicated to the Home Office.

On 6 March 2024, the Home Office revoked the company’s sponsor licence without notice. The reasons given were that Mr Ragunathan had assigned the certificate of sponsorship to a close relative, that the relationship had not been disclosed, and that the Home Office believed that the role had been created only to facilitate a grant of leave to Mr Sivalingam.

This was deemed a breach of sponsor duties and the letter stated that the sponsor licence had been revoked. At the point of revocation, the company had sponsored three workers.

Judicial review

The claimant submitted extensive evidence with its letter before claim, including witness statements and evidence about the recruitment process. The claimant maintained that this was a genuine vacancy and that Mr Sivalingam had been recruited following a proper process.

The claimant accepted that he had made an error but argued that it had been unintentional and that if allowed to make representations before the revocation, he would have explained that he had been doing his best to follow the rules.

The claim relied on the principle that the licence holder should have been given an opportunity to respond to the Home Office’s allegations and relied on a number of helpful authorities, including New London College v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 856 (Admin) and Balajigari v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 673.

Mrs Justice Hill adopted the approach in R (New Hope Care Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 1270 (Admin) and said that even though the guidance allows revocation without notice, such revocation can still be procedurally unfair under common law in certain circumstances.

The Home Secretary argued that her case did not rest of an allegation of dishonesty and thus did not fall under Balajigari. She took this position on the basis that the guidance permitted her to revoke the licence for nothing more than the company’s failure to comply with the sponsorship requirements by not notifying her that the sponsored worker was the director’s family member. The court disagreed:

62. An allegation that a level 1 user has assigned a CoS to a close relative and failed to make a note of that on the system, as part of a scheme involving a vacancy that was not genuine, is, in my judgment an allegation of “reprehensible conduct”, “bad faith” or “disreputable conduct” even if it is not, or not also, an allegation of dishonesty. It therefore falls within the rule in Balajigari at [55].

Finally, the court rejected the argument, advanced by the Home Secretary, that providing an opportunity for the claimant to offer representations was “pointless” since the outcome would have been the same:

71. Third, interpreting “pointless” as meaning “pointless, given the strength of the evidence”, which is the effect of Mr Biggs’ submission, would be inconsistent with the established principles of procedural fairness. As the Court of Appeal reiterated in Prestwick Care at [112] what fairness requires depends on the “character of the decision-making body, the kind of decision it has to make and the statutory or other framework in which it operate”. It does not depend on a unilateral assessment of the strength of the evidence and on culpability by the decision-maker before considering any representations from the affected person. …

72. Fourth, adopting such an interpretation would create considerable uncertainty as to whether the right to make representations applied in a particular case. That would undermine the public benefits associated with having a “clear and predictable scheme operating according to objective criteria”: EK (Ivory Coast) at [31].

The court also made helpful comments (at paragraphs 80 to 82) on how dishonesty decisions should be made. The Home Office decision maker should have first considered whether there was “any evidence of the sponsor having acted deliberately, or dishonestly” as required in the guidance. Next, the decision maker should have given reasons for believing that the vacancy was not genuine and had been created to facilitate Mr Sivalingam’s stay in the UK. The court noted that:

82. The scant reasoning here is similar to that in Supporting Care. There, the decision-letter contained nothing to indicate the basis on which the Secretary of State had drawn the adverse inference that the reason for the discrepancy between the worker’s job description and her actual duties was that her role had been deliberately exaggerated in order to facilitate her stay in this country. Given the seriousness of a finding of dishonesty, more reasoning was required to ensure compliance with the requirements of procedural fairness: [137].

Conclusion

This is a very helpful if not altogether surprising decision by the High Court. Practitioners working in business migration are advised to read the judgment in full as it contains a number of useful nuggets for challenging these types of revocation decisions where the business in question is not given an opportunity to make representations in respect of alleged misconduct, particularly where dishonesty is alleged.