Singhar Beauty Clinic Ltd v Secretary of State for the Home Department

A sponsor-licence revocation decision is lawful where the sponsor has fair notice of the concern, a proper opportunity to respond, and the Secretary of State reaches a conclusion supported by the available evidence. The decision-maker may request evidence that sponsored workers perform the duties stated in their Certificates of Sponsorship; interviews are not necessarily required. Previous compliance does not automatically require consideration where the position has materially changed. The court’s role remains supervisory. In this context the Secretary of State may apply a high index of suspicion, but the decision must still satisfy the stringent Wednesbury standard.

The claimant, a beauty-salon business holding a Tier 2 sponsor licence, sought judicial review of decisions revoking that licence on the ground that it had assigned Certificates of Sponsorship for vacancies that were not genuine. An earlier ground concerning failure to make sponsored workers available for interview was withdrawn after the defendant accepted that a factual mistake had been made.

The claimant challenged the final decision on procedural fairness, failure to consider previous compliance, mistake of fact, inadequate reasons and irrationality. Permission was initially refused by His Honour Judge Blair QC but granted on renewal by Collins J. The central issues were whether the claimant had fair notice of the evidential concern and whether the defendant’s assessment of the evidence was unlawful.

1. Claim dismissed. The final decision of 31 December 2015 replaced the earlier decision for the purposes of the challenge. The reasons challenge therefore fell away.
2. The defendant’s mistake about whether interviews had been requested was corrected. The final decision relied on two separate matters: the number of Certificates of Sponsorship issued and the absence of sufficient evidence that the sponsored workers performed the specified duties. Those matters did not depend on the mistaken interview allegation.
3. The claimant had fair notice of the concern. The reference to evidence that the workers were carrying out the duties stated in their Certificates of Sponsorship was sufficiently clear. The claimant had a fair opportunity to respond and in fact supplied witness statements and documents. The approach in R (The London Reading College Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWHC 2561 Admin was distinguishable because fair notice had been given here.
4. The defendant was not legally required to treat the claimant’s previous compliance as determinative or to revisit earlier inspections. The position had materially changed: six Certificates of Sponsorship had been issued for the relevant role within about ten months. The defendant was entitled to assess the circumstances existing in 2015.
5. There was no material mistake of fact. The defendant understood that only three managers were then employed, but was entitled to consider the earlier issue of six Certificates of Sponsorship and the claimant’s inconsistent explanations.
6. The irrationality challenge failed. The evidence was generic, repetitive and insufficiently linked to individual workers or particular duties. In light of the sponsor’s heavy responsibilities, the high degree of trust involved and the permissible high index of suspicion, the decision was not one that no reasonable decision-maker could have reached. The claim accordingly failed.

The judgment itself records the following procedural history:

• High Court (Administrative Court): Collins J granted permission on renewal on 26 April 2016. The judicial review claim was dismissed.
• Earlier permission decision: His Honour Judge Blair QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, refused permission on 14 March 2016.