Background
Daniel’s Special Care Limited, an English domiciliary-care provider, held a licence permitting it to sponsor migrant workers. Following a February 2025 compliance visit, the Home Secretary suspended the licence and then revoked it on 13 October 2025. The identified concerns included alleged shortfalls in sponsored workers’ hours and pay, inadequate retention of historical contact information, and failures relating to right-to-work checks.
The company sought judicial review of the revocation. After permission was refused on the papers, it renewed its application orally on five grounds. Grounds 1 to 3 alleged factual mistakes, failure to consider evidence concerning the company’s “Nourish” recordkeeping system and passport records, and breach of the duty to make reasonable inquiries. Ground 4 challenged the assessment of salary shortfalls, while Ground 5 alleged a failure properly to exercise the discretion to revoke or give adequate reasons.
The Court’s Holding
The High Court granted permission to seek judicial review on Grounds 4 and 5 only. It held that Ground 4 was arguable because the decision-maker may have been required to consider the additional pay evidence supplied after suspension and assess whether each employee was receiving the required annual salary rate, rather than effectively requiring the annualised rate to be met in every individual month. Questions about the appropriate assessment period, the evidence considered, and the degree of underpayment capable of making revocation inevitable were suitable for substantive determination.
That arguable salary issue also engaged Ground 5 concerning the scope and exercise of the Home Secretary’s discretion to revoke the licence. The court refused permission on Grounds 1 to 3, finding the challenges to the assessment of the company’s recordkeeping and right-to-work systems, and the related claim that further inquiries were required, unarguable. The judgment decided only which grounds could proceed; it did not determine whether the revocation was ultimately unlawful.
Key Takeaways
- A sponsor-pay assessment must arguably address whether the required annual salary rate is being paid and should not automatically treat every monthly fluctuation as a breach.
- Later pay evidence, including material supplied in response to a suspension decision, may need to be considered before a sponsor licence is revoked.
- Permission was limited to the salary-assessment and revocation-discretion grounds; the factual-error and inadequate-inquiry grounds were refused.
Why It Matters
The decision permits further scrutiny of how the Home Office evaluates fluctuating pay caused by matters such as unpaid leave, sickness, or reduced shift availability. It indicates that the assessment period and the treatment of all available payroll evidence may be legally significant when applying mandatory-revocation guidance.
For sponsor-licence litigation, the ruling also underscores the distinction between obtaining permission and succeeding on the merits: Daniel’s Special Care established an arguable case on two grounds, but the lawfulness of the revocation remained to be decided.