Guide
Right to work check for employers: the duty, the routes, the penalty
Updated
The employer duty is narrow and specific: check before they start, by one of three recognised routes, and check again if the permission runs out. Almost every penalty comes from missing one of those three, not from a hard judgement call.
Talk to a specialist One minute in the wizard against a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker.
Before they start, not after
Gov.uk puts the timing first: "You must check that a job applicant is allowed to work for you in the UK before you employ them" (gov.uk). A check run in week two is not a late check, it is an absent one for the purposes of the period before it.
This is the most common failure in a small business, and it is usually administrative rather than deliberate: the person starts on a Monday, the paperwork happens when someone gets to it, and the gap is the exposure.
The three routes gov.uk recognises
- Online check with a share code
- Where the applicant has given you their share code, you "check the applicant's right to work online". This is the route for most people with digital immigration status.
- Manual check of original documents
- You "check the applicant's original documents". Originals, in the applicant's presence or on a live video call while you hold the documents, not scans emailed ahead.
- Identity service provider using IDVT
- An identity service provider offering Identity Document Validation Technology can carry out the check for holders of valid British and Irish passports. You still keep the output.
Which route applies is decided by the person's status and documents rather than by employer preference. A share code is not available for everybody, and a manual check is not valid for somebody whose status is digital only.
Time-limited permission means a diary entry
"If your employee's right to work is time-limited, you'll need to check their documents again when it's due to expire." That converts a hiring task into an ongoing one, and it is where a compliant hire becomes a non-compliant employment months later. The date belongs in a system that will surface it, not in the file the original check went into.
What it costs to get wrong
Gov.uk states you "might have to pay a civil penalty (fine) of up to £60,000 for each illegal worker" (gov.uk). Per worker, not per incident, which is what makes a systematic gap in a small workforce a serious number rather than an irritating one.
A correct check carried out properly and retained is what stands between an employer and that penalty. The Home Office publishes an employer's guide setting out the detail of each route and what must be kept (gov.uk).
The three questions worth auditing your own process against
- Can you evidence the date of every check? The record has to show the check happened before employment began, not merely that it happened.
- Did you use the route that applies to that person? A manual document check on somebody with digital-only status does not establish what you needed it to.
- Do you know which of your staff have time-limited permission, and when it expires? If that list does not exist, follow-up checks are being missed by default rather than by decision.
Where this page stops
This sets out the duty as gov.uk states it. It does not interpret any individual's immigration status, which depends on documents and circumstances we cannot see, and it is not a substitute for the Home Office employer's guide where a case is not straightforward.