The Home Office last week published its latest in-depth review of the work of the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC).
You can read the 68-page review here, with the main body of the review, excluding the annexes, running to 35 pages.
Announcing the review in October 2014, the then Home Secretary said the review would examine whether there is a continuing need for the functions and form of the OISC and the nature of its relationship with government.
Last week's review concludes that there is still a need for the OISC to carry out its function of regulating the provision of immigration advice and services by practitioners who are not practising lawyers and are therefore not regulated by another body.
The review also concludes that this function requires impartiality and needs to be delivered at arms length from Ministers, and therefore that the OISC should continue as a non-departmental public body at arms-length from government.
Overall, the review finds that the OISC is a satisfactory regulator.
The review adds, however, that there are changes which should be made as to how the OISC so as to improve its efficiency and reduce the burden on the public purse.
"Currently the majority of funding for the OISC is from the taxpayer, with immigration advisers effectively being subsidised in a way that other legal professionals are not. The OISC's costs are higher than necessary through some inefficiency, providing unfunded services and some unnecessary bureaucracy. A degree of uncharged for activity takes place that needs to stop or be charged for, and fees must increase so that immigration advisers, who benefit from the regulatory activities undertaken by the OISC, are paying for these benefits and not being subsidised by Government," the review says.
According to the review, the OISC's expenditure in 2014/15 was around £3.9m, while it remitted approximately £1m of fee income back to the Home Office
The review makes a number of recommendations, including that the OISC should consider whether its current approach to monitoring Continuing Professional Development (CPD) compliance is the most proportionate and appropriate one.
As we reported on EIN in July, the OISC announced it was changing its CPD scheme including removing the requirement for advisers to undertake a set number of CPD hours per year and the requirement for advisers to record their CPD activity on the OISC CPD website.
An updated notice on the revised CPD scheme was published last month by the OISC here, and you can read a 10-page guidance booklet on the new scheme here.