Right to Work Checks: What Employers Must Do and What Workers Can Expect

Every prospective worker should be asked to show their right to work, and an employer cannot dictate how a person does it. To get a statutory excuse, the employer has to do one of three checks before the worker starts:

• ✓Yes: a manual check of the person's original documents
• ✓Yes: a Home Office online right to work check, using a share code
• ✓Yes: a check through a right to work digital verification service provider that is registered

The statutory excuse is the employer's defence against a civil penalty. It comes from the right check before work starts and, where the person's permission has an end date, a follow-up check. A check done for another purpose, such as a licence application, does not give one.

The employer can hand the checking to a member of staff, or to someone working under the employer's control, but it stays liable if the check is not done as required. It cannot get a statutory excuse by relying on a check an outside party did independently, such as a recruitment agency or an adviser. The one exception is a check done through a registered digital verification provider.

Which check applies depends on the person's nationality, the permission they have and, where there is a choice, their preference. If someone cannot show their right to work any of these ways, the employer may be able to use the Home Office Employer Checking Service, covered below.

A manual check follows the steps below, and all of them have to be finished before the person starts work. The same steps apply to a follow-up check.

If two documents show different names, the person needs supporting evidence such as a marriage certificate, a divorce decree absolute or a deed poll. Report a false document, or a genuine one that belongs to someone else, to the Home Office.

Students have limited permission to work in term time, so check evidence of their study and vacation dates. If a person's permission restricts the type of work or the number of hours, the job you offer must fit inside it.

The person generates a share code in the Home Office online service and gives it to you. A right to work code is 9 characters long and begins with W, and it is valid for 90 calendar days. You cannot accept a code that begins with R or S, because those are for other services.

If the name the person gives does not match the name on their eVisa profile, or the photo is poor or wrong, tell them to update their Home Office account. If the online service has a technical fault, such as producing an incorrect share code or result, you can use the Employer Checking Service.

You do not have to check digitally. If you choose to, the provider has to be registered on the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes register and able to provide right to work checks, and you stay responsible for the check being done as required. If it is not, you do not get a statutory excuse and may face a civil penalty.

You must not treat people less favourably if they do not hold a valid passport, or do not want to prove their identity this way. Offer them a manual document check instead.

If someone's permission to work has an end date and you want to keep employing them, you have to check again on or before that date. The follow-up does not have to be the same type of check as the first. If the first check showed settled status, or status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you do not need a follow-up.

A worker who cannot show continued permission may still have the right to work, for example because they have 3C leave while an in-time application is decided, or because of a technical fault. Give them a reasonable opportunity to prove it.

If, on the day your excuse is due to run out, you are reasonably satisfied that the worker has an outstanding application to extend their permission, or a pending appeal or administrative review, your excuse continues for up to 28 calendar days. That gives you time to get a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service or do an online check. This grace period does not apply to a check made before employment starts. For a new starter, consider delaying the start until you can do a proper check or hold a six-month notice.

The Employer Checking Service aims to reply within five working days. A Positive Verification Notice gives you a statutory excuse for six months from the date on it. A Negative Verification Notice means that if you carry on employing the person you have no statutory excuse.

If you do an online check, there is no need to look at any of the documents below. For a manual check, a few of the main ones are:

• ✓Yes: List A, a continuous excuse: a British passport, or an Irish passport or passport card, current or expired
• ✓Yes: List A: a current passport endorsed to show the holder can stay indefinitely or has no time limit on their stay
• ✓Yes: List A: a UK birth or adoption certificate, or a certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen, with an official document showing the person's permanent National Insurance number and name
• ✓Yes: List B group 1, an excuse until the permission ends: a current passport endorsed to show the holder can stay and do the type of work in question
• ✓Yes: List B group 2, an excuse for six months: an Application Registration Card stating the holder may take the job, with a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service

A clipped passport has had the corners of certain pages cut off. That marks it as cancelled, so it is not acceptable proof of right to work.

The Home Office stopped issuing biometric residence permits on 31 October 2024 and replaced physical documents with an online eVisa. A person with an eVisa can only prove their right to work through the Home Office online service. You can no longer accept a biometric residence card or permit, so ask the person for a share code instead.

The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 widened who has to prevent illegal working. From 1 October 2026 the duty covers more than a contract of employment. A person who engages someone under a worker's contract, as an individual sub-contractor, or through an online matching service is treated as their employer for these purposes and has to do a right to work check. The Home Office gives four examples:

• ✓Yes: A hotel employs a receptionist on set shifts. The hotel checks.
• ✓Yes: An employment business supplies temporary workers to bars on a contract for services. The employment business checks.
• ✓Yes: A delivery platform lets people log in and accept deliveries. The platform checks.
• ✓Yes: An online matching service puts a customer in touch with a cleaner. The matching service checks.

The scheme applies according to how an arrangement works in practice, whatever it is called. It does not cover someone running an independent business who contracts directly with customers. The Home Office's examples of arrangements outside the scheme are a self-employed plumber who advertises to the public and a graphic designer who contracts through their own personal service company.

Liability can also reach beyond the business that has the direct contract with the worker. This is called extended liability. It applies where a person contracted to provide work or services to a third party uses another employer's workers to do it, where an online matching service matches a provider with a customer, or where a contract lets a worker substitute someone else to do the work.

• ✓Yes: There is no general grace period. The requirements apply from 1 October 2026
• ✓Yes: The change is not retrospective. What counts is the date the contractual arrangement was entered into, so work continuing under an earlier arrangement does not bring it within scope on its own
• ✓Yes: In a standard agency arrangement the employment business stays responsible and the hirer is not expected to repeat the check
• ✓Yes: A fresh check is not needed before each assignment if the same employer holds a valid excuse and does any follow-up check on time
• ✓Yes: An employment status test or a tax determination such as IR35 does not decide whether a check is required

If you are a worker engaged through an app or platform, see our zero-hours contracts guide for your other rights.

An employer who employs someone illegally without having carried out the checks may face:

• ✗No: a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker
• ✗No: in serious cases, a criminal conviction with up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine
• ✗No: closure of the business and a compliance order from the court
• ✗No: disqualification as a director
• ✗No: losing the ability to sponsor migrants
• ✗No: seizure of earnings made through illegal working
• ✗No: a review, and possibly the loss, of a licence in the alcohol and late-night refreshment sector or the private hire and taxi sector
• ✗No: being named in the published list of non-compliant employers on GOV.UK

It is a criminal offence to employ someone you know, or have reasonable cause to believe, is an illegal worker. If an employer knows the person cannot do the work, they have no statutory excuse, whatever checks they did. For most routine cases the civil penalty is the sanction used.

A penalty is worked out case by case, and an employer who is served a Civil Penalty Notice can object to it and then appeal. The employer must object before going to court.

Working illegally is also an offence for the worker, including for self-employed work. The maximum is six months in prison and an unlimited fine in England and Wales, and six months in prison and a fine up to the statutory maximum in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wages can be seized as the proceeds of crime.

It is unlawful to discriminate on grounds such as race when carrying out right to work checks. Employers should check all workers consistently, British citizens included, and should not assume anything about a person's right to work from their race, nationality, accent, surname or how long they have lived in the UK. They should not check only the people they think are more likely to be migrants.

A person who is discriminated against can bring a complaint to an Employment Tribunal, or an Industrial Tribunal in Northern Ireland. If it succeeds, the tribunal will normally order compensation, and there is no upper limit. The discrimination at work guide and the protected characteristics guide explain how a claim works.

If you need help with a check, call the Home Office Employer Enquiry helpline on 0300 790 6268. If you suspect illegal working, report the person to the Home Office, or call the same helpline and ask for a Unique Reference Number. The Home Office also offers a quick online tool, a right to work checklist and a code of practice on preventing illegal working.

The law behind the checks applies across the whole of the UK, so an employer in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland does the same checks. The differences are the maximum fine for the worker's offence, noted above, and where a discrimination complaint goes: an Employment Tribunal in England, Scotland and Wales, and an Industrial Tribunal in Northern Ireland.