Raj And Knoll Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

A sponsor-licence decision must be read fairly, with common sense and in its policy context. It need not reproduce the exact words of the governing guidance. A request for representations that includes evidence can constitute a request for documents or information where the correspondence identifies the missing material and warns of revocation. Failures to retain recruitment evidence and report changes to business or employee locations may justify revocation. In discretionary cases, revocation is ordinarily expected for sponsor-duty infractions, subject to exceptional circumstances. The Secretary of State’s assessment is primary, and judicial review remains supervisory. Courts should respect specialist immigration expertise and the ability to act on a high index of suspicion where compliance risks arise.

The claimant operated three nursing homes and held a Tier 2 sponsor licence. Following compliance visits, the Secretary of State revoked the licence after identifying failures concerning Resident Labour Market Test records, the right to work of one employee, and the reporting of business and employee locations. The claimant challenged the revocation and its confirmation on three grounds: that mandatory revocation was wrongly invoked, that the findings of non-compliance were irrational, and that alternatives to revocation were not considered. The central issues were whether the suspension correspondence constituted a request for documents or information and whether the revocation decision was lawful.

The judicial review claim was dismissed.

1. Construction of the correspondence. Administrative decision letters should be read fairly, with common sense and in their proper context. They are not statutes and should not be read in isolation. Annex 5, sub-paragraph (ac), had to be read with the sponsor duties concerning the production and retention of documents. The suspension letter gave the claimant 20 working days to address identified issues, expressly including the submission of evidence, and warned that failure to do so would lead to revocation. That was a request for documents or information within sub-paragraph (ac), even though the precise wording of the provision was not reproduced.
2. Documentary non-compliance. The Secretary of State was entitled to find that the claimant had not adequately demonstrated compliance with the Resident Labour Market Test. The claimant had failed to retain sufficient evidence of advertisements, invoices and recruitment-agency arrangements. Revocation was justified on this ground alone.
3. Reporting duties. The claimant also failed to report changes to its registered business address and the working locations of sponsored employees. Intermittent compliance visits did not relieve the claimant of its continuing duties under the Guidance, nor could the visits establish which migrants worked at which address. The Secretary of State was entitled to regard these failures as serious breaches engaging Annex 6, sub-paragraphs (g) and (j).
4. Discretion and proportionality. Although the Annex 6 grounds were discretionary, paragraph 19.6 of the Guidance indicated that revocation was likely and expected in all but exceptional circumstances. The court applied R (Central College of London Limited) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2012) EWHC 1273 and London St Andrews College v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2014) EWHC 4328 (Admin). No relevant exceptional circumstances existed.
5. Reasons and judicial review. The Secretary of State was not required to disclose her internal process of thought. She had to explain the decision and its reasons clearly and succinctly. There was no evidence that the paragraph 18 process had not been followed, and the seriousness and number of the breaches made immediate revocation obvious. The court’s role was supervisory. It respected the Secretary of State’s primary judgment, the specialist expertise of UKBA and the permissible high index of suspicion identified in R (The London Reading College Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2010) EWHC 2561 Admin, R (Westech College) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2011) EWHC 1484 (Admin) and Reg. v. Bishop Challoner School, Ex p. Choudhury [1992] 2 AC 182.

The claim was dismissed. Interim relief was discharged, the licence reverted to revocation, and the claimant was ordered to pay the defendant’s reasonable costs.