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UK tech scaleups are racking up immigration penalties at a rate that specialists say is entirely preventable. The failures are consistent enough that the firms cleaning up the mess now recognise them before the client finishes explaining. Same mistakes. Different companies. Same outcome.

The numbers back that up. According to Home Office transparency data, 3,187 employers had their skilled worker visa sponsorship licence suspended or revoked in 2024 – a 252% increase on the 906 recorded in 2023 (DLA Piper). Fines tripled in February 2024 to £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for repeat offences (GOV.UK). In January 2025 alone, compliance officers visited 828 premises – a 48% rise year-on-year. The tech sector’s share of that caseload is growing.

“What strikes you when you’re dealing with these cases is how predictable they are,” says Yash Dubal, CEO and Director of A Y & J Solicitors, a London-based immigration law firm that works with technology businesses on sponsor licence compliance, audit preparation and enforcement defence. “Different businesses, different sizes, different products — the same three failures.”

The Promotion Nobody Told HR About

A developer joins on a skilled worker visa. Certificate of Sponsorship says Software Engineer. Eighteen months later they’re leading a team of six. Slack says Engineering Lead. Payslips say Team Lead. The CoS still says Software Engineer.
That’s not a paperwork gap. It’s a breach.

Then a sponsored worker’s core duties shift – particularly when seniority or job title changes – a new CoS is required and UKVI must be notified. Miss it, and you’ve violated your sponsor duties. The fact that the promotion was well-deserved is entirely beside the point.

“The business promoted someone. That’s a good thing. But no one told the person managing the HR system, and the HR system wasn’t talking to whoever was handling immigration compliance,” Mr. Dubal says. “By the time we’re involved, the worker has been in the wrong SOC code for fourteen months. UKVI treats that as a sustained breach, not an admin error.”

Sorting it out at that stage – legal costs, emergency CoS updates, civil penalty mitigation — typically runs between £8,000 and £15,000 per affected worker, as per A Y & J Solicitors’ casework. Multiply that across five engineers and you’ll quicky see costs adding up. And if the licence gets suspended while UKVI investigates, nobody on that engineering team can work.

The Contractor Who Wasn’t Really a Contractor

Statements of work are completely standard in tech. Contractor through a limited company, defined scope, engagement wraps up. Clean, familiar, low overhead. Until the contractor is a non-UK national whose immigration status is tied to a specific sponsoring employer — and what’s written in the contract doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening.

UKVI doesn’t look at what the contract says. It looks at what’s happening. Fixed hours, direction from your team, rates that function as a salary, working exclusively for you over months – UKVI may decide that’s employment. And if it does, you should have been sponsoring that person from the start.

“We see this most often in businesses that have grown quickly and started using contractors to scale engineering capacity without going through the overhead of the visa process,” Mr. Dubal says. “It feels like a sensible commercial decision at the time. When enforcement arrives, it looks very different.”

Not knowing isn’t a defence. UKVI can revoke a licence entirely where it decides the arrangement was designed – intentionally or not — to get around the sponsorship regime.

The Window That Closes Faster Than You Think

Sponsors must report certain changes within ten working days. Salary adjustments. A change in working location. An engineer redeployed to a different project. Ten working days is one sprint cycle. In a scaleup running three product lines with engineers moving between teams, that window gets missed — not out of negligence, but because nobody built a process to catch it.

“The reporting obligation doesn’t pause for a sprint cycle,” Mr. Dubal says. “We’ve had clients who were mid-product launch, engineers had been redeployed, reporting got missed, and six months later they’re explaining to UKVI why they failed to notify a change of working location for four employees.”

Miss it once and it’s a compliance issue. Miss it repeatedly and UKVI stops treating it as an oversight. It becomes a pattern, and patterns lead to revocation, not fines.

What to Do About It

If you sponsor overseas workers and haven’t reviewed your compliance position recently, there’s a reasonable chance you’re carrying risk you haven’t identified.

Pull every CoS issued in the last few years. Check the job title and SOC code against what that person is actually doing today. If the role has moved and the CoS hasn’t – fix it before UKVI does.

Review your contractors. For any non-UK national on an SOW basis, ask honestly whether the arrangement looks more like employment than contracting. If yes, get advice before it continues.

Build the ten-day reporting into your operations. Assign an authorising officer to own it. When an engineer moves project, changes location or their duties change, the clock starts immediately.

These three are the most common pressure points – but a full audit covers considerably more, including repeat right-to-work checks, salary verification, document retention, SMS personnel and business change reporting.

Firms like A Y & J Solicitors run compliance audits built around what a UKVI inspector actually checks – not what businesses assume they check. The gap between those two things is usually where the problem sits.

“The question is not whether you are compliant right now,” Mr. Dubal says. “The question is whether you can prove it, on paper, to an inspector who arrives without notice. Most businesses, when we first review their records, cannot.”
That gap is fixable. But only if you move before UKVI does.

is a UK immigration law firm specialising in sponsor licence compliance, business immigration and enforcement defence. Yash Dubal is Chief Executive Officer and Director.