Treal Care (UK) Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Factual and Procedural Background

Company A supplied care staff to the NHS, local authorities and clinical care groups and held a sponsor licence permitting it to sponsor migrant workers. The Secretary of State suspended the licence in August 2024 and revoked it in October 2024, relying on alleged salary failures involving three workers and an alleged absence of genuine vacancies. [1][2][3][4]

Company A successfully challenged the revocation by judicial review. The High Court quashed the decision, finding flaws concerning both the salary issue and the genuine-vacancy issue. The Secretary of State appealed only in relation to the salary issue. [5][6][7][8]

Legal Issues Presented

1. How should the sponsor guidance’s requirement that a worker be paid the salary stated on the Certificate of Sponsorship be interpreted where the worker works uneven hours? [9][10]
2. Whether the High Court correctly assessed the salary evidence concerning the three workers and the Secretary of State’s decision-making. [11][12][13]
3. Whether the statutory restriction on granting judicial review relief required the revocation decision to be upheld despite the identified errors. [14][15]

Arguments of the Parties

Secretary of State’s Arguments

• The guidance permitted assessment by monthly or other periodic payments, and the High Court wrongly treated the annual salary as the only relevant benchmark. [16][17]
• Where a Certificate of Sponsorship stated an annual salary, the sponsor was required to pay at least one-twelfth of that amount each month, subject to explanations for shortfalls. [18][19]
• The Secretary of State’s specialist judgment concerning sponsor compliance deserved substantial judicial respect, given the objectives of protecting migrant workers, preventing labour-market undercutting and maintaining immigration control. [20]
• The High Court should have upheld the decision because revocation was based on a mandatory ground and would allegedly have occurred even if only one worker’s underpayment had been established. [21][22]

Company A’s Arguments

• The relevant benchmark was the annual salary stated on the Certificate of Sponsorship, not a requirement to pay one-twelfth of that amount every month. [23][24]
• The Secretary of State’s interpretation was unsupported by the guidance and inconsistent with provisions addressing uneven working patterns, different salary periods and unpaid absences. [24][25][26][27][28]
• The decision should have considered the remedial payment to one worker, the unpaid leave affecting another, and the compassionate circumstances underlying the remaining worker’s reduced hours. [29][30][31]
• The errors could not be treated as harmless because the original decision concerned three workers, two mandatory grounds and allegations no longer maintained. [31][32]

Table of Precedents Cited

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court held that the meaning of the sponsor guidance was a question for the court. The guidance did not state that a worker paid annually must receive at least one-twelfth of the annual salary in every month. That interpretation was unsuitable for workers whose hours and pay varied between months. [36][37][38]

Compliance had to be assessed over a period bearing a fair relationship to the annual figure on the Certificate of Sponsorship. The Secretary of State retained broad discretion to select an appropriate period, particularly where a worker had uneven hours or had not worked for a full year. Monthly figures could be examined, but the conclusion had to take account of all available information and could not fairly be based on one month where the wider evidence pointed otherwise. [42][39]

The court also rejected the submission that mandatory revocation left no residual discretion. The opportunity for a sponsor to explain or remedy an apparent shortfall would serve little purpose if any mathematical underpayment automatically required revocation. The decision-maker therefore had to consider explanations and remedial action and reach a structured, proportionate and rounded assessment. [40][43][44][35][41][45]

Applying that approach, the four-month period used in the decision was a permissible sample. However, the High Court was entitled to find that the decision failed to account properly for Company A’s remedial payment to one worker, the unpaid leave affecting another worker, and the unexplained calculation of that worker’s monthly entitlement. [46][47]

The appellate court clarified that the remaining worker had in fact been underpaid during the relevant period, although the underpayment was later remedied. Nevertheless, the reason for the underpayment was relevant and had not been addressed adequately. The appellate court also disagreed that a further opportunity to respond was necessarily required on that point, but those observations were not essential to the outcome. [48][49]

Finally, the statutory “highly likely” test could not rescue the decision. The original decision relied on two grounds concerning three workers, whereas the appeal sought to rely on one established underpayment involving one worker, in circumstances involving strong compassionate reasons and no longer-maintained allegations. The court could not know what decision would have been made on that narrower basis. [32]

Holding and Implications

Appeal dismissed. The High Court’s decision quashing the revocation of Company A’s sponsor licence remained in effect. [10][32][50][51]

The direct effect was that the Secretary of State could not rely on the original decision to revoke Company A’s licence. For uneven-hours workers, compliance with an annual salary commitment requires a rounded assessment of the relevant payment data, explanations and remedial action rather than an automatic one-twelfth-per-month rule. The opinion does not state any broader implications beyond this application of the sponsor guidance.