Publication of Occupation codes of practice for Tier 2 salary rates

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, UK Border Agency should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear UK Border Agency,

In March this year the UKBA published on its website revised Occupation codes of practice for Tier 2 salary rates, replacing the figures published on 1st march 2010. These new figures were withdrawn about two weeks later and the old 2010 figures republished.

Did the UKBA withdraw these new figures in March and repost the old ones because of a disagreement with one of the suppliers of salary data to the UKBA?

If this was not the case what was the reason for pulling the new salary rates and putting the old ones back onto your website?

Has there ever been an instance where a supplier of salary data has objected to how the UKBA has used the data it provided to it?

Will you confirm that from 2008 when these occupation code salary rates were published, that each year that the salary amounts detailed actually changed to reflect the updated salary rates from your data suppliers, or was it just the reference on the document which changed to show the period they were in force.

Please will you provide copies of the Occupation codes of practice for Tier 2 salary rates documents for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Kellard

Hart, Gill,

Dear Peter,

In response to your email of 26 August which has been passed to me for
reply.

In maintaining the codes of practice, we have to strike a careful balance
between ensuring our guidance includes current information, and not
causing confusion and difficulties for sponsors by publishing continuous
updates. We have been criticised for updating the guidance too frequently
and we have to be mindful of these concerns.

In light of these considerations, we took the decision that we will update
the salary rates in the codes of practice roughly once a year, unless
there are compelling reasons to do otherwise.

The salary rates stated in the codes of practice are the national paid,
lower quartile salaries.

We state the sources of salary data in the codes of practice purely for
information. This should not be taken as an invitation to interpret those
sources differently by using different figures from them. Salaries must
comply with what is stated in the relevant code of practice.

Where we have national salary data, we do not provide breakdowns by region
or by industry sector. To do so would only perpetuate salary differences
across the UK. Employers should only sponsor Tier 2 migrants where there
are no suitable resident workers available. To provide a genuine test of
the resident labour market, we expect employers to offer a salary that
would attract a suitable resident worker, including those working in other
sectors or in another part of the UK. We do not consider these sorts of
pay differences as a sensible reason to resort to migration for
recruitment.

In specific response to your questions:

1. Did the UKBA withdraw these new figures in March and repost the old
ones because of a disagreement with one of the suppliers of salary data to
the UKBA? No

If this was not the case what was the reason for pulling the new salary
rates and putting the old ones back onto your website? The annual update
to the Tier 2 & 5 codes of practice for sponsored skilled workers was
published on the UK Border website on 1 March 2011 but an administrative
error was spotted immediately. The full suite of updated Codes of Practice
was removed from the website on the evening of 3 March to avoid confusion,
and the previous versions reinstated.

2. Has there ever been an instance where a supplier of salary data has
objected to how the UKBA has used the data it provided to it? No

3. Will you confirm that from 2008 when these occupation code salary rates
were published, that each year that the salary amounts detailed actually
changed to reflect the updated salary rates from your data suppliers, or
was it just the reference on the document which changed to show the period
they were in force. The following versions of the S/NVQ level Codes of
Practice were published as follows:

17/9/2008 - Initial version

26/11/2008 - Revised version in line with launch of Tier 2

18/3/2009 - New guidance added to the beginning of every section document
(before the tables on skilled, borderline and lower-skilled jobs). The
individual codes of practice were updated for the following Sections:

Section A - agriculture, forestry and fishing

Section C - manufacturing

Section D - electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply

Section F - construction

Section H - transportation and storage

Section I - accommodation and food service activities

Section J - information and communication

Section K - financial and insurance activities

Section M - professional, scientific and technical activities

Section N - administrative and support service activities

Section O - public administration and defence, compulsory social security

Section P - education

Section Q - human health and social work activities

Section R - arts, entertainment and recreation

Section S - other service activities

15/6/2009 - Section added to the codes to explain which jobs in the SOC
code are shortage occupations, and what evidence sponsors must keep to
show that the shortage occupation criteria have been met. References to
Jobcentre Plus were amended to include JobCentre Online for jobs in
Northern Ireland.

30/11/2009 - Amended minimum hourly rate in line with ASHE 2009 for 184
SOC codes.

1/3/2010 - Amended minimum salary in line with NHS Agenda for Change
April 2009 for relevant SOC codes.

1/3/2011 - Amended minimum hourly rates throughout all sections of the
codes.

3/3/2011 - Version 1/3/2011 withdrawn due to the identification on an
administrative error. Version 1/3/2010 re published.

6/4/2011 - Amendments made to Section P, Q, R and S to reflect changes to
the Government approved shortage occupation list. In addition, the
graduate level codes of practice were also implemented.

4. Please will you provide copies of the Occupation codes of practice for
Tier 2 salary rates documents for 2008, 2009 and 2010? You can gain
access to the archived versions of the Codes of Practice via the UK
Government Web archive at
[1]webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/*/http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/.
If there are specific sections of the codes that you are interested in
then it may be possible to forward an electronic copy of these to you.

We have an open invitation for you to contact us on the UK Border Agency
website found at
[2]www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/business-sponsors/points/sponsoringmigrants/employingmigrants/codesofpractice/
should you feel that any of the information in these codes of practice is
wrong.

Regards

PBS Operational Policy l North East, Yorkshire and the Humber Region l UK
Border Agency l Level 2 Vulcan House l PO Box 3468 l Sheffield S3 8WA

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Dear Gill,

You mentioned in your reply to my first question that an administrative error resulted in the removal of the newly published rates in March. That was over 6 months ago, what was the actual administrative error? Will you provide an update as to when the admisintrative error will be corrected and the correct rates republished.

One other point of clarification. You refer to the rates as being the "national paid, lower quartile salaries", rather than just the "lower quartile salaries", is there a difference?

Yours sincerely,

Peter Kellard

Hart, Gill,

Dear Peter,

In response to your further email of 4 October. I apologise for the
delay in responding.

In advance of a broader review of the Codes of Practice by the Migration
Advisory Committee after April 2012. We are currently conducting a
targeted interim review to identify and update migrant salary levels of
certain sectors and occupations within the Codes of Practice as
necessary, based on comments and representations received from those
sectors and any other key interested parties.

I have forwarded your comments to colleagues working on this.

Regards

PBS Operational Policy l North East, Yorkshire and the Humber
Region l UK
Border Agency l Level 2 Vulcan House l PO Box 3468 l Sheffield S3
8WA

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Dear Ms Hart,

Thank you for your reply and information on the Codes of Practice Review. You didn’t actual answer my question about the administrative error requiring the removal of the figures posted in early March 2011. What was the actual administrative error which required the removal of these salary rates 8 months ago? It must have been a big error to take this long to resolve.

In your reply you refer to a targeted interim review by the UKBA of salary levels, by that do you mean a review of ‘salary package levels’? How will the interim review being conducted by the UKBA be reconciled with that of the MAC as there seems to be a duplication of effort in this area? What were the criteria for your targeted review used to identify ‘key interested parties’? Will you publish this list of Key parties?

Peter Kellard