We are going through a redundancy process in our UK business. One of the people who will be made redundant is a Skilled Worker visa holder sponsored by our company. They will be eligible for indefinite leave to remain in 4 weeks but will be made redundant almost immediately after. They have asked for a letter from us to support their indefinite leave to remain application. Can we provide this? We want to be as supportive as possible but do not want to breach any rules or regulations.
This is a very tricky situation to be in. While you want to be supportive, you need to have a good understanding of the requirements of the Immigration Rules for indefinite leave to remain as a Skilled Worker, and of your obligations not only as an employer but also as a sponsor licence holder.
One of the requirements for indefinite leave to remain as a Skilled Worker is that the current sponsor of the Skilled Worker must confirm in writing that they still require the employee to work for them for the foreseeable
future. While there is no definition of how long the ‘foreseeable future’ is, the imminent redundancy will mean that you could not truthfully say that you do require this employee in role for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to provide the letter to support the employee’s application.
In this situation, what could you and the employee do?
The employee could seek a new sponsor, and you could support them by giving them time off to attend job interviews etc.
The employee may have a different immigration route available to them. While you wouldn’t want to try to provide them with immigration advice, you may encourage them to seek independent legal advice, and could
even provide financial support to help with this, to enable them to explore other options.
You could try to extend the redundancy process as far as commercially and legally possible to give them time to try to resolve their immigration situation. If you were to do this, you would need to ensure that you treated all employees who had been identified for redundancy equally, and that you extended the time period for all.
During this process, you will also need to remember your sponsor duties. Once the redundancy process has been completed, and employment has terminated, you will have 10 working days to report this change on the
sponsor management system.
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