Do you employ EU, EEA or Swiss nationals within your business?

Avoid a civil penalty of £20,000 for inadvertently employing someone who doesn’t have the right to work under the new regime or worse a criminal penalty for doing this knowingly.

For the purposes of this article EU, EEA & Swiss natonals are encompassed under the term, EU nationals.

Are you ready for the end of free movement following the forthcoming changes in Immigration Rules?

Immigration Officers can arrive at your business out of the blue to review who you are employing and look at your right to work checks.

From 1st January EU citizens can no longer enter the UK without a Tier 2 Visa. However, they don’t have to apply for settled status until 30th June 2021 and employers are not permitted to ask for evidence of their settled status before then. This is problematic for businesses!

It’s already a requirement to carry out Right to Work checks for all employees regardless of nationality so ensuring that you continue to do these as per Home Office requirements will give you a strong defence in the meantime, should you inadvertently employ an individual who does not have the right to work.

With that in mind, consider carrying out some due diligence of your current workforce and ensure their Right to Work checks are all up to date.

Regarding prospective employees, an ID card or passport isn't going to provide you with the date they entered the UK to enable you to ascertain whether they started living in the UK prior to the 1st January 2021, giving them eligibility to apply for pre-settled or settled status.

Therefore, in your recruitment processes you may wish alongside the Right to Work checks you do currently, to ask the individual when they entered the UK, especially if you’re not already certain they were working in the UK prior to applying to work within your business. This may give you a little comfort because if you know they entered the UK for the first time on or before 31st December 2020, and you have carried out the normal right to work checks, you can’t ‘knowingly’ be employing an illegal worker. If they entered the UK on or after 1st January 2021 and you're not certain they were working in the UK prior to that with another employer, this may lead to a reasonable belief that they don’t have the right to work.

If you regularly recruit from the EU, EEA or Switzerland, make sure you put relevant processes in place to enable you to continue to recruit from outside the UK after 31 December 2020. You’ll need to apply for a sponsor licence if you don’t already have one. Applications are currently taking around 4-6 weeks to process so apply as soon as you can.

If you already have a sponsor licence, check that it’s up to date and hasn’t expired. Check that any employees who are ‘registered personnel’ for your licence are still employed.

On a final point, take a look at the risk associated with the possibility of losing EU nationals from your business. How exposed are you? Could you find yourself in a position where existing employees don’t want to apply for their EU settled or Pre-Settled status? Have you communicated with your EU nationals and updated them on their need to apply? If they’re not fully aware of the need to apply, they could find themselves in a position where you may not be able to employ them post 30 June 2021.

The Skilled Worker route is being rolled out from the 1 December 2020 and we are assured that there is more guidance to come which will hopefully provide more clarity on some of the more tricky issues.

However, do seek advice if you have any concerns regarding the way your business currently handles or will handle the Right to Work going forward.

If you need any HR advice or HR support, feel free to call for a no-obligation chat, Skora HR will be happy to help. 0330 056 3664.