Right to Work Checks UK: 2026 Law Changes Explained
If you employ anyone in the UK — whether that’s a handful of site operatives or a workforce spread across multiple contracts — checking their right to work isn’t optional. It’s a legal duty, it applies before day one, and getting it wrong carries some of the steepest civil penalties in UK employment law.
From 1 October 2026, the rules are also getting wider. For the first time, right to work checking obligations extend beyond the direct employer-employee relationship to cover agency workers, subcontractors and gig-economy arrangements — exactly the kind of flexible labour that construction, facilities management and field service businesses rely on every day.
Here’s what the law actually requires, what’s changing, and where a digital staff profile fits into keeping you compliant — and out of the headlines.
Table of Contents
What the law requires today
The core duty
Under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, every employer must verify that a worker has the right to work in the UK before their employment starts. This applies to every new hire regardless of nationality — including zero-hours staff, temporary agency workers, and people taken on through a third party.
Important: assuming someone has the right to work based on their appearance, accent or how their name sounds is not just poor practice — it’s unlawful discrimination as well as a compliance failure.
Three ways to check:
- Manual document check — for British and Irish nationals, checking a passport or other accepted document in person and keeping a copy.
- Home Office online checking service — for anyone with an eVisa or other digital immigration status, verified using their share code.
- Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT) — a remote digital check for British or Irish passport holders, but only when carried out through a certified provider.
List A and List B documents
The Home Office splits acceptable documents into two lists, and which one a worker provides determines your ongoing obligations:
- List A — gives an unrestricted, continuous right to work. Check it once and you’re done — no follow-up required.
- List B — gives a time-limited right to work. You must carry out a follow-up check before the permission expires, or you lose your legal protection.
Record-keeping
A check isn’t complete once you’ve looked at the document — you have to prove you did it, and when. You must keep a copy of every document checked (a hardcopy or an unalterable scan, such as a PDF or JPEG) securely for the duration of the person’s employment and for a further two years after it ends.
The Home Office has been explicit that simply writing a date on a copied document doesn’t in itself prove that’s the date the check happened — the record needs to be clear, contemporaneous and demonstrable if it’s ever inspected.
The penalties for getting it wrong
Civil penalties run up to £60,000 per illegal worker. Beyond the fine, the consequences can include business closure notices, director disqualification, and, in the most serious cases, imprisonment. Enforcement activity has been increasing, and the Home Office can inspect records at any time — you don’t need to have done anything else wrong to be checked.
What’s changing from October 2026
Two changes coming into force on 1 October 2026 matter in particular for contractors and field service businesses working with flexible labour:
1. The duty extends beyond direct employment
Right to work checking is being extended to cover the wider labour supply chain — not just your own direct employees. Agency workers, subcontractors and gig-economy arrangements in sectors like construction, courier work and warehousing are being brought into scope. For businesses that regularly bring in subcontracted labour or agency staff for site work, this means checking obligations — and the £60,000-per-worker exposure — can now reach further down the supply chain than before.
2. Stricter rules for digital verification providers
Where an employer relies on a digital verification service to establish their legal defence, that provider must, from October 2026, be registered on the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes register and specifically authorised for right to work checks — not simply accredited for general identity checks. This is worth knowing if you currently use, or are considering, a third-party digital ID verification service as part of your hiring process.
Where a digital staff profile fits in
None of this changes what the law asks for — a proper check, on time, with a record that holds up to inspection. What changes is how much harder that becomes to manage by hand once you’re tracking dozens or hundreds of workers with different document types, different expiry dates, and different sites.
This is where pro-Forms® Staff Digital Profile earns its keep. It won’t perform the right to work check itself — that still has to be done through one of the three routes above — but it takes the administrative weight off the process that follows:
- Secure document storage — the checked document is stored against the worker’s profile, satisfying the requirement to keep a copy on file.
- Expiry tracking for List B documents — so a follow-up check is never missed because nobody noticed a visa or permit was about to lapse.
- A timestamped, contemporaneous audit trail — exactly the kind of clear, demonstrable record the Home Office expects if your records are ever inspected.
- Instant sharing with third parties — a worker’s profile can be sent to a site manager or client by email, SMS or QR code scan ahead of a visit, which matters more than ever now that checking obligations reach into the subcontractor chain.
The takeaway
Right to work compliance isn’t going away, and from October 2026 it’s getting broader, not simpler. For contractors and field service businesses juggling site staff, subcontractors and agency workers, the risk isn’t usually the check itself — it’s the record-keeping and follow-up tracking that slips once the paperwork spreads across spreadsheets, email inboxes and filing cabinets.
A digital staff profile won’t replace your legal duty to check — but it will make sure you can prove you did it, on time, for every worker, every time.
Want to try Digital Profile for your business?
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal or immigration advice. Right to work requirements change frequently — always verify current rules against the Home Office’s Employer’s Guide to Right to Work Checks on GOV.UK and seek professional advice before making compliance decisions.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-checks-employers-guide
