An Unannounced Visit: The Two Questions from Home Office Enforcement That Every Care Provider Must Answer

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It started with a white van and two officers arriving unannounced at one of the care homes. They approached the receptionist and asked for two individuals by name, showing printed sheets with the workers' photos and personal details.

The receptionist confirmed they worked there but were not on site. One of the workers was on a student visa; the other was sponsored by a different organisation.

These were not compliance officers conducting a routine audit. These were enforcement officers, who typically act on intelligence and have the power to arrest anyone found working illegally. These visits can escalate into raids in minutes. The civil penalty for employing an illegal worker is severe: up to £45,000 per worker for a first offence and £60,000 for repeat offences.

The Registered Manager was called to the front desk. The officers asked him just two questions.

The Two Questions That Can Cost You Everything

The officers' questions were not about paperwork or filing. They were about process and knowledge. They cut to the heart of a compliance issue that nine out of ten providers get wrong.

How do you know that your part-time workers are not working more than 20 hours in total across all their part-time jobs?

Are you checking that the part-time hours you give your workers fall outside their main contracted hours?

The manager's ability to answer these two questions determined whether his organisation would face a crippling fine and potential revocation of its sponsor licence.

The Hidden Risk in Your Part-Time Workforce

If you compare a new Right to Work (RTW) check certificate with older versions, you will notice crucial differences under the "Conditions" and "Additional part-time work" sections. Two points are now explicitly clear:

Total Hours: Part-time work is limited to 20 hours per week in total, even if the worker holds multiple part-time jobs.

Scheduling: The part-time work must be performed outside the contracted hours of their main sponsored job and must not take priority over that primary role.

I always ask my clients if they have a robust process to check and record these details before hiring part-time staff. The overwhelming majority do not.

They assume that a student or a worker sponsored elsewhere can legally work 20 hours per week for them. They fail to confirm whether that worker is already employed elsewhere, which would reduce the available hours. They fail to check if the hours they are offering clash with the worker's primary employment contract.

Workers, often desperate for more hours than their main sponsor can provide, will not always volunteer this information. The onus is on you, the employer, to verify it. If you hire them and breach the conditions attached to their stay, you will be held responsible.

This breach is most common in care homes, particularly within larger groups where hiring decisions are delegated to individual Registered Managers who are not fully trained on the nuances of sponsor compliance. The result is that they unknowingly expose the entire organisation to massive risk.

An Immediate Action Plan for Your Organisation

These two steps are not optional; they are essential.

Conduct an Immediate Audit: Identify all your part-time workers who are on student visas or are sponsored by another organisation. For each one, check if you have a documented process to confirm they are not breaching the two conditions above. If you cannot prove this, you must investigate immediately. If a breach is found, cease their part-time work and create a new, robust process.

Notify All Managers: Immediately disseminate this information to all your hiring managers across all locations. Ensure they understand this is not a minor administrative point but a major compliance risk that can trigger enforcement action.

From Manual Checks to Automated Protection

Manual checks are a critical emergency measure. But they are not a long-term solution. Manual checks are prone to human error. They are a snapshot in time, not a continuous process. They create paperwork, not a clear and auditable digital trail.

The incident described above is a perfect example of why we built the Sponsor Complians Hub. When you onboard a part-time worker, our system prompts you to record their primary employment details and available hours. The integrated rota system then automatically flags any shifts that would breach the 20-hour total limit or clash with their main job's contracted hours. It provides a real-time, automated safeguard that manual processes can never match.

It turns a complex, high-risk calculation into a simple, automated background check, giving you a complete audit trail to prove your diligence to the Home Office.

Don't wait for the white van to appear. Don't wait to be asked the two questions you can't answer. Take control of your compliance today.

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