Prestwick Care Limited & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department

A sponsor-licence revocation decision must satisfy ordinary standards of procedural fairness, but the sponsorship regime does not generally require heightened fairness because the licence is a privilege dependent on continuing compliance. The sponsor must be told the case it has to meet and given a reasonable opportunity to respond, including relevant evidence and mitigation. The decision-maker need not ordinarily invite further evidence or create additional stages of representations. The Secretary of State may rely on staff interviews and maintain a high index of suspicion. Commercial consequences and effects on local care provision are not ordinarily relevant to whether the sponsor can be trusted to comply with the guidance.

The claimants, a group of care-home companies, challenged the Secretary of State’s decision to revoke their sponsor licence. The revocation followed compliance visits and allegations concerning inaccurate Certificates of Sponsorship, salary deductions, sick pay, recovery of immigration-related costs, employment practices, right-to-work monitoring and contact records.

The claimants alleged procedural unfairness, failure to approach the matter with an open mind, irrationality and failure to consider relevant matters. Permission for judicial review had been granted, and an interim injunction had suspended the revocation pending judgment.

1. Claim dismissed. The revocation decision was lawful and the interim order was discharged on hand-down.
2. The applicable standard was the ordinary standard of fairness. The claimants had to know the case against them and have a reasonable opportunity to respond. If genuinely new allegations arose, further notice would be required. The decision-maker also had to consider the representations with an open mind. The sponsorship guidance did not require a second or third stage in which the Secretary of State identified evidential shortcomings and invited further mitigation.
3. The licence was a privilege, not a fundamental right. Its precarious nature, the high degree of trust placed in sponsors, the Secretary of State’s expertise and the low threshold for intervention meant that the commercial seriousness of revocation and the absence of an appeal did not justify heightened procedural scrutiny. Goldcare and the principles collected in St Andrew’s College supported that conclusion.
4. The Secretary of State was entitled to rely on staff interviews, assess the claimant’s evidence and require the sponsor to substantiate its explanations. The claimant had been given sufficient opportunity to address the job-description, salary-sacrifice, immigration-charge and contact-record issues.
5. The sick-pay ground was different. The suspension letter raised non-compliance with employment law concerning payment of statutory sick pay. The revocation decision instead relied decisively on reports that managers had told workers sick absence would not be paid. The claimant had not been given a fair opportunity to answer that distinct allegation. That error did not establish a closed mind, but it would not have justified relief because revocation was highly likely to have followed on the independent mandatory grounds and the other serious breaches.
6. The court distinguished procedural fairness from irrationality. A procedural defect may contribute to an irrational decision, but a claimant who fails on the pleaded procedural challenge cannot maintain an unpleaded merits challenge merely by treating the two grounds as interchangeable. The court deferred to the Secretary of State’s assessment of sponsorship compliance.
7. The Secretary of State was not required to balance immigration control against the effects on local care provision, nor to investigate the commercial viability of the claimant’s businesses. Those matters were not relevant to the central question whether the sponsor could be trusted to comply with the guidance.

This was a first-instance judicial review. Permission was granted by Fordham J on 21 April 2023. An interim injunction granted by Bryan J on 7 February 2023 was discharged on hand-down of the judgment.