5 Ways To Object To A Civil Penalty UK Immigration Notice

It's a distressing experience for an organisation when, without warning, it receives a civil penalty UK immigration notice.

A civil penalty notice informs an organisation it has employed a person who did not have permission to work in the UK, in breach of section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.

RESPONDING TO A CIVIL PENALTY FOR ILLEGAL WORKING

A business can either accept and pay the civil penalty for illegal employment, or return an objection form.

Acceptance is encouraged by the Home Office. Payment plans can be arranged and if full payment is received within 21 days the organisation is rewarded with a 30% discount.

On the other hand, the objection process can appear risky and pointless.

Potential objectors are warned that if they elect to challenge the penalty, the Home Office may decide to increase it.

It may, for example, determine that the mitigation applied for an organisation's cooperation is no longer applicable.

An objection may also seem futile. The review is, after all, undertaken by the same people who fixed the civil penalty UK immigration notice in the first place. They rarely change their mind.

While an objection can appear pointless, it is a necessary stage of the process. A right of appeal to the County Court only arises if an applicant has first formally objected to the decision.

Organisations may feel they have suffered an injustice that does not fit neatly within the narrow grounds of objection the Home Office deems acceptable.

While the Home Office is unlikely to take these matters into account, a County Court judge may be more willing to hear them.

FIVE POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS TO A CIVIL PENALTY UK IMMIGRATION NOTICE

1. No proof of the offence

   If an appeal advances to the County Court, the Home Office will be required to prove an organisation has committed an offence under the Act.

   Section 15 requires the Home Office to prove two things:

   A person did not have the appropriate right to work in the UK; and A business employed that person. The Home Office must provide sufficient evidence to prove each of these elements and a valid defence may simply be that it has failed to do so.

   A business may, for example, dispute it ever employed a person, because that person was working as an independent contractor or was engaged through a recruitment agency.

   In the Court of Appeal case of James v London Borough of Greenwich [2008] EWCA Civ 35, it was determined that a worker engaged through an agency does not...