Right to work checks: the employer's checklist
Before day one, dated, kept for employment plus two years - the seven steps that stand between you and a £60,000 civil penalty.
Do the check before the person starts work, keep a dated copy for the whole employment plus two years, and you have a statutory excuse against a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker. There are three valid routes: a manual document check, an online check using a share code, or an Identity Service Provider check for British and Irish passport holders. Skip the check and the excuse doesn't exist, however genuine the mistake.
The right to work checklist
- 1. Decide the route. Share code (online), manual document check, or IDSP for British/Irish passport holders.
- 2. Obtain. Get the original documents, or the share code plus date of birth.
- 3. Check. Confirm photos and dates of birth are consistent with the person in front of you (or on video), that dates haven't expired, and that any work restrictions are noted.
- 4. Copy. Take a clear copy - the full document, both sides of a BRP - or save the online check profile as a PDF.
- 5. Date it. Record the date the check was made. An undated copy is not a statutory excuse.
- 6. Store it securely for the duration of employment plus two years.
- 7. Diarise any expiry. Time-limited permission needs a repeat check before it runs out.
What are the three types of right to work check?
| Route | Who it's for | What you keep |
|---|---|---|
| Online (share code) | most visa holders, eVisa and settled/pre-settled status | the online check profile page, saved and dated |
| Manual document check | British/Irish passport holders and others with acceptable documents | a dated copy of the document |
| Identity Service Provider (IDSP) | British and Irish citizens with a valid passport, checked digitally | the IDSP's identity verification output, dated |
The share code route is now the norm for anyone with immigration status held digitally - they generate a code at gov.uk and give it to you with their date of birth; you enter both on the employer checking service. A share code is valid for 90 days and is specific to the employer purpose.
What is a statutory excuse - and how do you lose it?
Doing a compliant check gives you a statutory excuse: if the person turns out not to have the right to work, you're protected against the civil penalty. You lose it by doing the check late (after they started), copying documents without dating them, accepting a document you could reasonably see was false, or letting a time-limited permission lapse without a follow-up check.
- Checking after day one. A check done in week two protects nothing for week one.
- No date on the copy. The most common single failure, and the easiest to fix.
- Forgetting the follow-up. A two-year visa expiring quietly mid-employment.
- Checking only some people. Which is both a compliance gap and a discrimination risk - see below.
Do you check everyone, or only people who look foreign?
Everyone. Every new hire, without exception. Checking selectively - based on name, accent or appearance - is race discrimination, and it's also how gaps appear in the records. The Home Office's own guidance is explicit that checks must be applied consistently to all candidates.
When do you need a follow-up check?
When someone's permission to work is time-limited. Record the expiry date at the point of hire, diarise a repeat check before it lands, and complete it in time. Where a person has applied to extend and the application was made before expiry, the Employer Checking Service can confirm continued right to work.
What does a failed or unclear check mean?
If you can't establish a right to work, the person can't start - and if they've already started, take advice before acting, because dismissal in these circumstances needs handling carefully. Don't guess, and don't quietly keep them on: continuing to employ someone you know has no right to work moves the exposure from a civil penalty into criminal territory.
Right-to-work evidence sits alongside the rest of the new starter paperwork - see the new starter checklist and the onboarding checklist for where it fits in the first week. If the role also needs a criminal-record check, that's a separate register with its own rules - see DBS checks: the employer's guide.
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Evidence that doesn't go missing
CoDash stores right-to-work evidence against the person's record with expiry dates tracked and follow-up checks prompted before permission lapses.