Right to Work Changes from 1 October 2026: What Employers Need to Know

The rules on right to work checks changed on 1 October this year, when the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (“the Act”) came into force. This Act widened employers’ mandatory right to work checks and extended liability to cover a much broader category of working arrangements.

The Home Office has published an updated draft Code of Practice on preventing illegal working and an updated Employer’s Guide to right to work checks, which set out the new rules in detail. This update outlines the changes to employers’ right to work obligations and sets out what employers should do to comply with the changes.

What were the previous right to work requirements?

Prior to 1 October, employers were required to carry out right to work checks on any individual working under a “contract of employment including a contract of apprenticeship” before the employment begins. In other words, right to work checks were required to be carried out on employees and apprentices only. This involved obtaining, checking, and retaining the appropriate documents or using the relevant online right to work check service.

If employers carried out these checks correctly, they had a "statutory excuse" which protects them from liability for a civil penalty if they are subsequently found to have employed someone who does not have the right to work in the UK.

What’s changed?

Right to work checks

From 1 October 2026, employers are now required to carry out right to work checks on a wider group of individuals which includes any individual employed or engaged:

• Under a contract of employment, including a contract of apprenticeship. This remains unchanged and is the same category of employment covered before 1 October 2026.
• Under a worker’s contract. This means a contract, other than a contract of service or apprenticeship, under which the individual undertakes to do or perform personally work or services for you. The contract may be with you directly, or through another company or organisation (such as an agency). The company receiving the work must not simply be a client or customer of the individual’s own independent business or profession. This might include a zero-hour worker or an agency worker.
• As an individual sub-contractor. This means an individual who contracts to carry out work or provide services for a company or organisation that has been hired by you to do the same work. The individual works for the company or organisation, rather than having a direct contract with you. This might include individual consultancy arrangements (where the individual is not genuinely self-employed) and subcontracting arrangements where you engage a contractor indirectly through another company.
• Through an online matching service, under which service providers (individuals providing, or seeking to provide, work or services for remuneration) are matched with potential clients or customers. An online matching service business is one which does all of the following:
  • keeps a register of service providers for the purpose of matching them with potential clients or customers;
  • provides an online service through which potential clients or customers can submit enquiries to be matched with suitable service providers; and
  • charges a fee or commission in return for making such matches.

Extended liability

Where an employer has a direct contractual relationship with an individual falling within the above categories, it must now carry out a prescribed right to work check before the individual commences employment or work. However, the Act also creates extended liability for non-direct contractual arrangements in three situations:

• a person is under a contract to provide work or services to a third party and enters into a contract with another employer providing workers to fulfil that contract
• where an online matching service provides details of a service provider to clients or customers, and the service provider enters into a contract with a client or customer; or
• where an employer employs an individual to provide work or services, and the contract allows them to substitute another person to do the work in their place.

This means that liability for employing workers illegally may extend beyond the business that directly engages an individual. Depending on the circumstances, you may be liable for a civil penalty where an individual does not have the right to work in the UK, even if you engage them indirectly through another business rather than contracting with them directly.

The new rules do not apply to individuals who are genuinely self-employed or where your organisation is simply purchasing services for its own use and is not supplying those services onwards as part of a chain of contracts (such as if you engage a cleaning company to clean your offices).

How will this work in practice?

If the above situations apply, employers will be responsible for carrying out the required right to work checks on any individual personally providing the service, even if they are not their direct employer or do not contract with them directly.

In practice, you will still need to continue to carry out right to work checks for all individuals employed under a contract of employment, as before, as well as carrying out right to work checks on the wider category of individuals set out above.

In order to establish a ‘statutory excuse’, there are now slightly different requirements depending on whether the employer employs or engages the individual directly, or whether it is liable under the new ‘extended liability’. The requirements for both are set out in the recently published HMRC guidance and the Code of Practice. In summary:

• An employer with a direct contractual relationship with an in-scope worker must carry out a prescribed right to work check before the individual commences employment or work. The existing methods of checking remain: a prescribed manual document-based check or an online check.
• If an employer does not directly contract with an individual and falls within one of the three scenarios where extended liability applies (as above), they must demonstrate compliance with the ‘prescribed requirements’ applicable to the relevant contractual arrangements. These include:

1. Contractual terms and conditions – there are prescribed terms which must be incorporated into the contract or a written statement with the service provider
2. Substitution controls – where a contract permits that work may be carried out by a substitute, there must be prescribed processes to carry out right to work checks which must be implemented before work commences; and
3. Identity verification – there must be “proportionate” processes to verify the identity of the person carrying out the work.

What happens if I get it wrong?

Employers will need to show that the right work check was done in the prescribed way, before the work started and on the relevant person actually carrying out the work. If you are found to be employing or engaging someone illegally without having a valid statutory excuse, you could be subject to fines starting at £45,000 for first breaches and £65,000 for subsequent breaches.

These fines apply to each individual found to be working illegally, so the overall cost of penalties can be significant. This is an increase to the pre-1 October penalty, which was a fine of up to £20,000 per illegal worker.

What should I do to comply with these changes?

This new expanded regime applies where the engagement started on or after 1 October 2026. Steps which you may want to consider are:

• Review your current right to work procedure and ensure that this is not limited to the recruitment stage of employees but is extended to cover the wider scope of workers.
• Identify all individuals who personally provide work or services and assess whether they are within scope, including employees, workers, agency workers, individual consultants and subcontractors.
• Amend your commercial contracts and supplier terms to ensure that these are consistent with the ‘prescribed terms’ set out in the HMRC guidance.
• Implement a policy of ID verification for all workers whom you do not contract with directly.
• Provide training to relevant staff to ensure that they are aware of the changes.

How can Tozers help?

Tozers can support you at every stage of implementation. We can review your existing right to work processes, identify gaps, and help you design a compliant, practical approach that covers your whole workforce.

How to stay in the know

As changes come in, we are monitoring developments closely and will share relevant insights here. You can view a full overview of the expected changes and an indication of when they will take effect here. If you are subscribed to our newsletter you will also receive notification via email. To make sure that you are receiving this information straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

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