Following our update on 6 June, the Home Office introduced on 1 July a number of changes and added features to the Sponsor Management System. Having now had an opportunity to assess the practical impact of these changes, we feel the following updates are the most useful:

  • An advanced search function for certificates of sponsorship (CoS), which allows you to find CoS that you have created using a wide range of search parameters, such as CoS status and work start dates – this means that you can now access a list of all sponsored migrants under each immigration category. This is a very useful update as we can now produce a full list of issued CoS and the respective SMS updates.
  • Reduced and simplified options for reporting migrant activity – crucially sponsors must now enter the date at which the reported change took place, so it is important to report changes in the migrant’s employment as promptly as possible to ensure compliance with your sponsor duties.
  • A new 'Applications and renewals tracking' screen on which you can monitor the progress of applications made after 1 July. Although this sounds good, however, the reports on progress are limited and not particularly helpful.
  • The start, end and renewal opening dates for your sponsor licence are now displayed on the 'Licence summary' screen (formerly 'Sponsor summary').
  • A new message screen, displaying to all Level 1 users immediately after logging into the system, has been introduced to provide important information such as answers to FAQs and forthcoming key dates.

Please note that despite earlier indications from the Home Office that the update would simplify the process for sponsors to add additional Tiers and categories to existing sponsor licences, this feature has unfortunately not been included in the 1 July update.