The World Health Organisation (WHO) has increased its influenza pandemic alert level to 6. This means that there is now evidence of increased and sustained human-to-human transmission of the swine flu virus across a number of global regions.

You should have recently received an invitation from the UK Border Agency to a series of events to inform sponsors of the next phases of the roll-out of Tier 4 beginning this autumn. 

The UK Border Agency will soon be circulating a letter to all Tier 4 Registered Sponsors to inform you about the Bulk Data Transfer Implementation Toolkit - to be used by sponsors to migrate some key information from their IT systems directly into the Sponsor Management System.

The Department of Children Schools and Families has produced a range of guidance documents on Swine Flu for the education sector.

Yesterday morning, Tony Millns, accompanied by Nick Lewis of the Association of Colleges, gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on the topic of bogus colleges.

The UKBA uploaded revised versions of the application forms for Tier 4 and the accompanying guidance notes to their website on Monday 1 June. They have also developed visa letter example templates.

As from 6 April 2009, HSE is publishing new versions of its approved health and safety poster and leaflet. The new versions are modern, eye-catching and easy to read and were introduced after recent research showed that the poster and leaflet approved in 1999 are visually unappealing and rarely read.