Right to Work Checks: Who Will Need to Be Checked From October 2026?

The Right to Work Scheme is expanding from 1st October 2026, meaning businesses will need to consider right to work checks for a wider range of workers including contractors, casual workers, subcontractors or gig workers.

Businesses may need to think beyond their traditional employees when it comes to right to work compliance.

What is a right to work check?

A right to work check is a check carried out to confirm that someone is legally allowed to work in the UK.

For employers, carrying out the correct check before someone starts work can provide a statutory excuse against a civil penalty if that person is later found to be working illegally.

Currently, the requirement has largely focused on people employed directly under a contract of employment.

This means that if you employ someone, you should check their right to work before they start, keep evidence of the check and, where their permission to work is time-limited, make sure a follow-up check is completed when required.

Businesses may already choose to carry out checks on other types of workers for contractual or compliance reasons, but these individuals have not generally been covered by the statutory Right to Work Scheme in the same way as employees.

That is now changing.

What is changing from October 2026?

The Right to Work Scheme is being extended to cover additional working arrangements, including:

• People working under a worker’s contract
• Individual subcontractors
• Certain online matching services that connect individual service providers with customers for payment

The civil and criminal sanctions for illegal working are also being extended to these arrangements.

For employers, this could mean a significant change to the way right to work compliance is managed.

You may already have a well-established process for checking employees during recruitment and onboarding. But what about someone engaged directly by a manager? Or an individual subcontractor working on your behalf? Who checks them, who keeps the evidence and who makes sure a follow-up check happens if their permission to work is time-limited?

These are questions businesses need to start considering now.

What happens if you don’t comply?

Right to work compliance is important because the consequences of getting it wrong can be significant.

Under the current civil penalty regime, penalties can reach £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and £60,000 per illegal worker for repeat breaches.

There can also be more serious consequences in certain circumstances, including criminal penalties, reputational damage, potential sponsor licence implications and business disruption.

For businesses using large numbers of temporary, casual or subcontracted workers, multiple compliance failures could become particularly costly and even detrimental to some businesses.

How do you carry out a right to work check?

There are several ways a right to work check can be completed. The appropriate method will depend on the individual’s circumstances and the evidence available.

1. Manual document check

A manual check involves obtaining the individual’s original acceptable documents and checking them to make sure they appear genuine and relate to the person presenting them.

You should consider things such as:

• Whether the photograph matches the person
• Whether dates of birth are consistent
• Whether the documents appear genuine and have not been tampered with
• Whether any differences in names can be explained
• Whether there are any restrictions on the work the individual can undertake

A clear copy of the relevant documents should then be retained, along with the date the check was completed.

2. Home Office online right to work check

For people who use the Home Office online service, including many eVisa holders, the process is different.

The individual provides a share code, which allows the employer to access their right to work information through the Home Office service.

The employer must still check that the information relates to the person presenting themselves for work and that they are permitted to carry out the work in question.

3. Digital Verification Service

An approved Digital Verification Service can be used for eligible British and Irish citizens.

There is also an Employer Checking Service for certain situations where an individual’s right to work cannot be established through the usual routes.

Whichever method you use, the important thing is that the correct check is completed before the individual starts the relevant work and that appropriate evidence is retained.

Don’t forget about follow-up checks

Completing a right to work check is not always a one-off task.

Some individuals have an indefinite right to work in the UK, while others have time-limited permission. Where permission is time-limited, a follow-up check will be required.

This is where businesses can easily lose track.

A spreadsheet or calendar reminder can be difficult to manage, particularly when you have a large workforce or people being engaged through different routes. Your process needs to flag when action is required and make it clear who is responsible.

Keep right to work information organised with our HR software

oneHR makes it easier to manage right to work information alongside your other employee records.

With a dedicated Right to Work section on each employee profile, you can store the relevant documentation on the system, making it easy to see exactly where the information is for each employee.

Built-in reminders can also help you stay on top of documentation that needs to be renewed, helping to make sure right to work information remains up to date.

The process can also be added to your onboarding automation on the system, so completing the right to work check becomes part of the standard onboarding process rather than something that can easily be forgotten.

You can also assign actions to managers to collect the required information, helping make responsibilities clear and reducing the risk of checks being overlooked.

Instead of information being held across emails, spreadsheets and individual folders, everything can be kept together in one place, giving you a clearer overview of your compliance position.

What should your business do now?

With 1 October 2026 currently the date businesses should be preparing for, now is a good time to review how your organisation currently manages right to work checks.

Start by looking at everyone who carries out work for your business, not just your employees.

Consider:

• Who currently has a right to work check?
• Are there groups of workers who are not currently being checked?
• Who is responsible for completing the checks?
• Where is the evidence stored?
• Who monitors time-limited permission?
• What happens when you use subcontractors or substitutes?
• Can managers engage people outside the normal HR process?
• Is everyone clear on who is responsible for completing and recording the check?

The key is to have a clear, consistent and properly recorded process.

The upcoming changes may mean that businesses need to expand the way they approach right to work compliance. By reviewing your current arrangements now and using an HR system, such as oneHR, to build checks and reminders into your processes, you can identify gaps early and be better prepared for the changes ahead.

Book a demo to see how oneHR can help you manage right to work checks in your organisation.

Call: 0330 107 1037

Email: contact@onehrsoftware.com

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