When an organisation applies for a sponsor licence, it is required to appoint people within the business to certain roles; one of those roles is the Authorising Officer, or AO.
The person that you nominate for the role of AO for your sponsor licence application must be the most senior person within your organisation with responsibility for hiring all your firm’s migrant workers and making sure you fulfil your duties as a sponsor.
Some organisations applying for a sponsor licencemight not directly recruit the workers that they sponsor. If this is the case for your organisation, the Authorising Officer role should be filled by the most senior person within your organisation who will be responsible for your activities as a licensed sponsor.
If you are subject to a sponsor licence refusal, and you decide to wait until the “cooling-off period” has elapsed before applying again for a sponsor licence, you will have the opportunity to appoint an Authorising Officer, who may be different to the person nominated for the role at the time of your previous application.
Indeed, it might have even been the Home Office’s doubts about the suitability of your choice of Authorising Officer that contributed to the refusal of your previous application – in which case, you would be highly advised to make a change.
When you apply for a sponsor licence, you can expect the Home Office to undertake checks on you and your staff to determine their suitability for the sponsorship roles to which you have appointed them. If, for instance, your chosen Authorising Officer has an unspent criminal conviction for a relevant offence, or has been fined by UKVI at some point in the last 12 months, the department may decide to not grant a licence to you.
For further advice on the legal and other implications of attempting to change your Authorising Officer at any point in the application process or when challenging a sponsor licence refusal, please call our immigration solicitors today on 0208 215 0053.