If your business uses contractors, casual workers, subcontractors or gig workers, the need for a right to work check is about to become a much bigger consideration.
For years, businesses have largely treated right to work checks as part of employee onboarding.
You employ someone, you check they have the legal right to work in the UK before they start, you keep the evidence and, where their permission to work is time-limited, you make sure the appropriate follow-up check happens.
But the way businesses access labour has changed considerably.
Many organisations now rely on workers, contractors, subcontractors and app-based labour. In some sectors, that is simply how the workforce operates.
The Right to Work Scheme is being extended beyond traditional employees to cover people engaged under a worker’s contract, individual subcontractors and certain online matching services which connect service providers with potential customers.
Although much of the coverage has understandably focused on the “gig economy”, this isn’t just an issue for delivery platforms or large technology businesses.
If your organisation relies on people working outside a traditional employment model, this is something you need to understand now.
Businesses should currently be preparing for 1st October 2026.
The Home Office has published draft updated Codes of Practice written to apply from that date and reflect the wider categories of workers being brought within the Right to Work Scheme.
1st October is therefore the date businesses should be working towards, although the final implementation arrangements are still to be confirmed.
For employers using workers, individual subcontractors or gig economy labour, the practical approach is to use the time between now and October to review how people are engaged, where the current gaps are and who will be responsible for carrying out and recording the checks.
Waiting until the final implementation detail lands is likely to leave very little time to get the process right.
Under the current statutory scheme, the obligation to prevent illegal working has largely centred on people employed under a contract of employment.
Businesses may already carry out checks more widely for commercial, contractual or compliance reasons, but self-employed individuals have not generally fallen within the statutory Right to Work Scheme in the same way as employees.
That has created a gap between the law and the way many modern workforces actually operate.
A business employing somebody directly is required to carry out the prescribed checks if it wants to establish a statutory excuse against a civil penalty.
Where labour has been accessed through other working arrangements, the position has been different.
That is what is changing.
The extended Right to Work Scheme will cover additional working arrangements, including:
The associated civil and criminal sanctions for illegal working are also being extended to these arrangements.
And this is probably the part businesses need to pay most attention to:
Calling someone “self-employed”, a “contractor” or a “gig worker” will not automatically put them outside the rules.
The actual working arrangement matters.
That is particularly important for businesses which have historically relied heavily on contractual labels when categorising their workforce.
The Government has specifically identified sectors including construction, food delivery, beauty salons, courier services and warehousing.
But I wouldn’t read that as an exhaustive list.
Hospitality, logistics, care, seasonal businesses, agency-heavy operations and organisations with significant subcontractor networks should also be looking carefully at how people are engaged.
For SMEs in particular, this could expose a weakness that has gone unnoticed for years.
You might have a perfectly good right to work process for employees but very little central oversight of people coming into the business through other routes.
At its simplest, a right to work check establishes whether an individual is legally permitted to carry out the work in question in the UK.
But there is an important difference between doing a check and doing the prescribed check correctly.
Where the statutory scheme applies, carrying out the prescribed check correctly can give a business a statutory excuse against liability for a civil penalty if the individual is subsequently found to have been working illegally.
Depending on the individual’s circumstances, checks can be carried out through:
There is also the Employer Checking Service for certain circumstances where an individual’s right to work cannot be established through the usual routes.
The correct method depends on the individual’s immigration status and the evidence available.
For a straightforward manual check, think obtain, check and retain.
Obtain the original acceptable documents required by the Home Office guidance.
Don’t simply rely on whatever document somebody happens to send you.
For people using the Home Office online service, including many eVisa holders, the process is different. They provide a share code that allows the business to access their right to work information through the Home Office service.
You aren’t expected to be a forensic document examiner.
You are expected to take reasonable steps to satisfy yourself that the evidence relates to the person presenting it and that they are permitted to undertake the work in question.
For a manual check, this includes considering whether:
For an online check, you also need to satisfy yourself that the photograph shown on the Home Office record is of the person presenting themselves for work.
Timing matters.
Under the statutory scheme, the prescribed check needs to be completed before the person starts the relevant work if the business wants to establish a statutory excuse.
Putting somebody to work on Monday and sorting the paperwork on Friday isn’t the same thing.
Build the check into onboarding, not into the clean-up exercise afterwards.
For manual checks, make and retain a clear copy of the relevant documents and record the date the check was carried out.
For online checks, retain evidence of the Home Office check in accordance with the applicable guidance.
Records establishing the statutory excuse generally need to be retained for the duration of the working relationship and for the required period afterwards.
And remember that right to work documents contain personal data. Immigration compliance doesn’t remove your data protection obligations.
Some people have an indefinite right to work in the UK. Others have time-limited permission.
Where permission is time-limited, your process needs to identify when a follow-up check is required and make sure it actually happens.
A spreadsheet nobody looks at isn’t much of a control.
Your system needs to flag the issue early enough for somebody to act.
This is where businesses can create a completely separate legal problem while trying to solve an immigration compliance problem.
Do not decide who needs checking based on somebody’s name, accent, appearance, nationality or your assumption about where they come from.
British citizens need to demonstrate their right to work too.
The Home Office is clear that right to work checks should be carried out consistently and that employers should not make assumptions about somebody’s immigration status based on their colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, accent or surname.
So don’t send managers away with a vague instruction to “check anyone who might need a visa”.
Give them a proper process and make sure they understand that it applies consistently.
Otherwise, in trying to deal with an immigration compliance risk, the business could create a discrimination risk instead.
This is where the numbers become difficult to ignore.
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.
A correctly completed prescribed right to work check can provide a statutory excuse against a civil penalty where the relevant requirements have been met.
In more serious cases, there can be criminal consequences where the criminal threshold is met, as well as reputational damage, sponsor licence implications, potential business disruption and publication of the business’s details by Immigration Enforcement.
For an SME, particularly one using significant numbers of temporary or subcontracted workers, several failures could become very expensive, very quickly.
And once the extended scheme takes effect, businesses using the working arrangements being brought within scope won’t be able to assume this is only an issue for their PAYE workforce.
Don’t wait until the commencement position is finalised and then start trying to work out who in the business counts as what.
Start with your workforce. Map everyone who actually performs work or services for the organisation and identify how they are engaged. This includes employees, workers, agency staff, individual contractors, subcontractors, freelancers, casual labour and people coming into the organisation through other intermediaries or platforms.
Then establish:
For a large organisation, this could become a significant supply-chain exercise.
For an SME, it might be half a day with the right people around a table.
Either way, it is much easier to find the gaps yourself than have Immigration Enforcement find them for you.
For many businesses, the biggest adjustment will be making sure their existing right to work process covers the wider group of people being brought into scope.
That means understanding who is actually carrying out work for the business, how they are engaged and whether they currently go through any form of right to work check.
Responsibility also needs to be clear. Where people can be engaged outside the usual HR or recruitment process, managers, Operations, Procurement and HR need to know what is required and who is responsible for completing the check and keeping the evidence.
For businesses using subcontractors or other intermediaries, it is also worth reviewing those arrangements now rather than assuming responsibility sits elsewhere.
This doesn’t need to become an unnecessarily complicated process. But it does need to be consistent, properly recorded and understood by the people responsible for engaging workers.
With 1st October 2026 currently the date businesses should be preparing for, there is a useful window to review existing arrangements and deal with any gaps before the extended scheme takes effect.
To find out more or for support with conducting right to work checks, please get in touch with our team.
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