Why Right to Work Checks Are Non-Negotiable

Employers in the UK have a statutory duty under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to check that every worker they employ has the legal right to work in the UK before employment begins. For staffing agencies acting as employer of record for temporary and contract workers, this obligation cannot be delegated to the client or assumed to have been done by someone else. It must be done by the employing entity - which is the agency. Failure to carry out the check, or failure to carry it out correctly, removes the statutory excuse available to employers who inadvertently employ illegal workers. Without that excuse, the civil penalty for employing an illegal worker is up to £60,000 per worker.

The check also has a criminal dimension. Knowingly employing someone without the right to work carries a potential custodial sentence of up to five years for individuals in a management role who knew or had reasonable cause to believe the worker had no right to work. The knowledge threshold is lower than most employers assume - receiving a worker introduction with no documentation and not asking questions has been held sufficient to establish reason to believe.

For staffing agencies placing workers across multiple sites and at high volume, the operational challenge of right to work compliance is significant. The checks must be consistent, documented, and retained for at least two years after the worker's employment ends.

How Right to Work Checks Work

Right to work checks can be conducted through three routes: manual document checks, online checks via the Home Office employer checking service, and identity document validation technology (IDVT) provided by certified service providers.

Manual checks require the employer to obtain the original document, check it is genuine, check the worker is the rightful holder, and take a copy dated and signed on the day. The acceptable documents are listed in Lists A and B in the Home Office guidance. List A documents (British or Irish passport, biometric residence permit with unlimited leave, settled status share code) give an indefinite right to work. List B documents (biometric residence permit with time-limited leave, pre-settled status share code) give a time-limited right that must be re-checked when the permission expires.

Online checks via the Home Office service are required for individuals who have biometric residence permits, settlement status, or other digital immigration statuses - physical documents are no longer issued in these cases and cannot be checked manually. The online check generates a share code that the worker provides to the employer, who then verifies it against the Home Office database.

IDVT checks via certified providers allow employers to check the identity of British and Irish passport holders remotely and in real time. This option, available since 2022, is valuable for agencies onboarding remote workers or contractors who cannot attend an in-person verification appointment.

A compliance lead at a healthcare staffing agency managing 400 active workers implemented a right to work audit protocol that required a re-check of every worker on a time-limited permission 60 days before expiry, with automatic suspension of timesheet processing if the re-check was not completed before the expiry date. The automated suspension prevented three instances of continued employment after permission had lapsed in the first six months of operation, eliminating the potential penalty exposure those cases would have generated.

Right to Work Check in Practice

A payroll manager at a commercial staffing agency was onboarding a new batch of 25 temporary workers for a seasonal retail client. Three workers presented EEA national identity cards as proof of right to work. Post-Brexit, the accepted documents list no longer includes EEA identity cards for new starters (though they remained valid for checks conducted before June 2021). The manager paused onboarding for those three workers and contacted the Home Office employer checking service to verify their status. Two had settled status confirmed; one had not yet applied. The two confirmed workers were onboarded with online check records retained. The third was advised to apply for settled status before commencing employment, which she did. Onboarding proceeded correctly with full documentation for all 25 workers.