Right to work checks for subcontractors: what changed on 1 October 2026

What changed on 1 October 2026

The commencement regulations (SI 2026/683) brought section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 into force on 1 October 2026. Its heading: "extension of prohibition on employment to other working arrangements".

Section 48 inserts a new section 14A into the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. In the illegal working sections, employing someone now also covers three arrangements that were outside them before (legislation.gov.uk, section 48).

An individual under a worker's contract

A contract other than employment under which the individual undertakes "to do or perform personally work or services", where the person engaging them is not a client or customer of a business the individual runs.

An individual sub-contractor

An individual who has contracted with you to provide work or services "in circumstances where person B has entered into a contract with a third party to provide, or arrange for the provision of, the work or services but individual B has not". In plain terms: you won the job, and an individual you sub-contracted is doing it.

An online matching service

A business that keeps a register of service providers, lets clients submit enquiries online to be matched with them, and "charges a fee or commission in return for making such matches".

The Home Office guide gives an example of each. Of a courier working through an app: "The delivery platform is the individual's employer for the purposes of the Right to Work Scheme".

It says the same of an employment business supplying temporary bar staff on a contract for services. And of an online matching service that finds a homeowner a cleaner (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026).

The chain: a contractor can be treated as the employer

Section 48 also inserts section 15A. It covers a person who has contracted to provide work or services and contracts someone else to provide them. That person "is to be treated as employing any individual" who personally provides the work.

This applies "including where" it "is not in a contractual relationship" with that individual or "does not know" they are providing it. It applies "regardless of whether that contract is the first or any other contract in a chain of contracts" (legislation.gov.uk, section 48).

Its example (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026) is a housebuilder subcontracting foundations and bricklaying down a chain. "The construction company may be treated as the employer of any individuals who personally carry out work or services through the relevant contractual chain".

The direct employer does not get off the hook. The guide: "The employer who has the direct contractual relationship with the worker remains responsible for carrying out a right to work check and establishing a statutory excuse". Extended liability matters most where that employer cannot be found, or never checked.

What a contractor up the chain needs before work starts

A business that is not the direct employer can still establish a statutory excuse. It "must comply with the prescribed requirements relevant to the contractual arrangements before the work commences". It must also "be able to provide evidence of that compliance if requested" (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026). The guide lists three.

1. A written statement in the contract. Terms requiring the next party to carry out prescribed right to work checks, not to sub-contract further without your prior written consent (and to pass the same obligations down), to allow you to audit their checks, to let you act where illegal working is found, and to co-operate with any Home Office investigation.
2. Substitution controls. Where a contract lets a worker send someone in their place, a check on every substitute before they work, never delegated to the worker themselves.
3. Identity verification. "Proportionate systems and processes" to make sure the person doing the work is the person whose right to work was checked, such as site passes, attendance systems or re-verification at set intervals.

The guide adds that contract wording alone is not enough. A business "should not rely on contractual terms alone" and should be able to show the arrangements are "operating effectively in practice".

Who is not caught

The guide says extended liability "does not apply to every business that purchases work or services from another business". Nor does it apply to a client or customer buying work or services for its own internal operations.

Its example is a retailer hiring a facilities firm to clean its own supermarkets. The retailer is outside; the facilities firm, as the cleaners' employer, keeps the duty and the liability (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026).

Nor does the scheme reach a genuinely independent business. The guide: "This guidance does not apply to individuals who are operating an independent business either in their own name or through their own company". That means those "who contract directly with clients or customers to provide goods or services".

Someone finding work through a platform or intermediary without their own business "may still fall within scope" (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026).

Only engagements from 1 October 2026

For a worker's contract, an individual sub-contractor or an online matching service: "a civil penalty may only be imposed where the employment commenced on or after 1 October 2026". The prescribed requirements apply "where the relevant contractual arrangements were entered into on or after 1 October 2026" (Home Office employer's guide, 1 October 2026).

What it costs to get wrong

The penalty is the existing one. Gov.uk states an employer "might have to pay a civil penalty (fine) of up to £60,000 for each illegal worker" (gov.uk). Since 1 October 2026 the business it falls on can be the platform, the agency or the head contractor, not only the firm that paid the worker.

Where this page stops

This sets out what the Act and the Home Office guide say. Whether an arrangement is a worker's contract, a sub-contract or a purchase for your own use turns on the contracts and the work, which we cannot see. The guide says you can take legal or HR advice where needed. It is not legal advice.