The Complete Employer's Guide to Ongoing Right to Work Compliance

The right to work check that gets you fined isn't the one at hire — it's the one you forgot 18 months later when a visa expired.

Most employer guides on right to work checks in the UK cover the same ground: verify documents before someone starts, keep copies, done. That advice isn't wrong, but it stops at the easy part. The hard part — and the part where employers actually face penalties — is ongoing compliance: tracking visa expiry dates, running follow-up checks on time, and maintaining records that hold up when the Home Office visits.

This guide covers the full right to work check lifecycle, from the initial check through follow-up obligations, the 28-day grace period, and the record-keeping standards the Home Office enforces.

This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on your specific situation, consult a qualified immigration solicitor.

Right to work checks are an ongoing legal obligation

Under Section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, employers face civil penalties for employing someone without the right to work in the UK. Your defence — the "statutory excuse" — requires conducting prescribed checks both before employment begins and, for employees with time-limited permission, at specific intervals throughout employment.

The Code of Practice on Preventing Illegal Working (updated 13 February 2024) sets out exactly what checks you need to do and when. Getting the initial check right is the baseline. Maintaining your statutory excuse through follow-up checks is where most small employers fail.

List A vs List B: why it determines your follow-up schedule

The documents your employee presents fall into two lists, and the list determines your entire ongoing obligation.

List A documents prove permanent right to work. These include:

• A UK or Irish passport (or Irish passport card)
• A certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen
• A permanent residence card or document confirming indefinite leave to remain

If your employee shows a List A document, your statutory excuse is continuous. One check at hire covers you indefinitely — no follow-ups required.

List B documents prove time-limited right to work. These split into two groups:

Group 1: A passport or travel document with a current visa or endorsement showing a right to work with an expiry date. This also includes Biometric Residence Permits — though BRPs expired on 31 December 2024. If an employee still presents one, direct them to set up their eVisa.

Group 2: A Certificate of Application from the EU Settlement Scheme, an Application Registration Card, or a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service.

Group 1 triggers a follow-up check before the permission expiry date. Group 2 triggers a follow-up every 6 months from the Positive Verification Notice date.

If even one employee presented a List B document, you have a follow-up obligation. Miss it and your statutory excuse disappears.

When follow-up checks are due

List B Group 1 (time-limited visa or endorsement):

1. Run a follow-up check before the expiry date on the document
2. If the employee provides a new document with a later expiry, the cycle resets
3. If they cannot provide evidence of ongoing right to work, you must act — either through the 28-day grace period process or by ending employment

List B Group 2 (pending application or EUSS certificate):

1. Run a follow-up check 6 months from the date of the Positive Verification Notice
2. Contact the Employer Checking Service to verify their status
3. If the Home Office confirms ongoing right to work, your statutory excuse renews for another 6 months
4. Repeat until the employee receives a final status decision

Running the check itself: The process mirrors an initial check — obtain the original document or use the online right to work service with a share code, verify it in the employee's presence, and keep a dated copy. For employees on the new digital status, see our eVisa checking guide. The critical difference is timing: the check must happen before the existing permission expires, not after — and turnaround can vary, so plan ahead using our guide on how long checks take.

Our follow-up check timeline calculator can generate a full check schedule from a visa expiry date.

The 28-day statutory excuse window

When an employee's right to work expires, you don't have to dismiss them the next morning. The Code of Practice provides a 28-day grace period — but only if you are reasonably satisfied the employee has a pending immigration application or appeal.

During those 28 days:

1. Contact the Employer Checking Service to verify the employee's status
2. The Home Office responds with either a Positive Verification Notice (confirming ongoing right to work) or a Negative Verification Notice
3. Positive notice: your statutory excuse continues — schedule the next follow-up in 6 months
4. Negative notice: the employee has no right to work — continuing to employ them after receiving the notice exposes you to civil penalties

If you don't act within the 28-day window, your statutory excuse is gone. No extension, no second chance. Every day past day 28 is a day you're employing someone without a defence.

For a micro-employer with 3 visa-holding staff, one missed 28-day deadline could mean the difference between a £0 penalty (statutory excuse intact) and up to £135,000 in fines.

Record-keeping: what the Home Office expects on inspection

When the Home Office visits — and enforcement activity increased significantly in 2024, with penalty rates tripling in February and enforcement visits rising after the July election — they will ask to see your records. The right to work checklist sets out the documentary requirements.

For each employee, keep:

• A copy of the document(s) you checked — both sides of any ID card, the photo page and any relevant endorsement pages of a passport
• The date you made the check
• For online checks via share code: a saved copy or printout of the online confirmation

For follow-up checks, additionally record:

• The date of each follow-up check
• The documents verified at each follow-up
• Any Positive Verification Notices from the Employer Checking Service
• The expiry date triggering the next follow-up

Retention period: Keep all records for the duration of employment plus 2 years after the employee leaves. Digital copies are acceptable — you don't need paper files, but you do need to retrieve them quickly when asked.

Home Office caseworkers assess whether your process is consistent and retrievable. A well-organised digital register with dates and document types is stronger evidence than a box of undated photocopies.

What a missed follow-up actually costs

The civil penalty regime under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 sets these maximum penalties per illegal worker:

Offence type	Maximum penalty per worker
First breach	£45,000
Repeat breach (within 3 years)	£60,000

These apply per worker, not per business. A care home with 4 employees who all need follow-up checks faces up to £180,000 in first-offence exposure. Penalties can be reduced by up to £5,000 each for reporting suspicions to the Home Office before a check, cooperating with the investigation within 10 days, and demonstrating that partial compliance measures were in place (per the Code of Practice, paragraphs 3.1–3.2).

Criminal prosecution is also possible if the Home Office believes you knowingly employed someone without the right to work — carrying up to 5 years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine under Section 21 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.

The statutory excuse is your only defence against civil penalties. If you conducted the prescribed checks at the right times and kept proper records, you won't be fined — even if the employee didn't actually have the right to work. But miss a follow-up, and the defence disappears.

Use our penalty risk calculator to see what a missed check could cost your specific business.

Building a practical follow-up process

If you don't have an HR department — and most micro-employers don't — the follow-up process needs to be simple enough to maintain alongside everything else.

1. Create an employee register

For every employee, record:

• Name and start date
• Document type presented (List A, or List B Group 1/Group 2)
• Date of initial right to work check
• Visa or permission expiry date (List B only)
• Next follow-up check due date

2. Set reminders ahead of expiry dates

Don't rely on memory. Set reminders at:

• 90 days before expiry — start planning
• 30 days — contact the employee about documentation
• 14 days — escalate if documentation hasn't arrived
• 7 days — final warning; prepare to contact the Employer Checking Service

3. Run the check before expiry, not after

A check done the day after expiry is too late to maintain a continuous statutory excuse. Build in buffer time.

4. Document everything with dates

Record the check date, what you verified, and the outcome. If you contacted the Employer Checking Service, save the response.

5. Review your register monthly

Ten minutes a month reviewing upcoming expiry dates is the single step that separates compliant employers from those who get fined. If you're evaluating tooling to do this, see our guide to right to work check software. And if an employee asks you to support a visa application or extension, our visa employer letter guide covers what to include.

Quick compliance checklist

For a printable version, see our right to work checklist template.

1. Every new hire gets a right to work check before their start date — no exceptions, including British citizens
2. Record which list (A or B) and group (1 or 2) each employee's documents fall under
3. For List B Group 1: set a follow-up reminder before the visa expiry date
4. For List B Group 2: set a follow-up reminder 6 months from the Positive Verification Notice date
5. Keep dated copies of all documents — digital is fine
6. Retain records for the duration of employment plus 2 years after the employee leaves
7. Apply the same process to every employee — checking only foreign nationals is discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010
8. Review your register monthly for upcoming expiry dates

Not sure which documents are valid? Try the RTW document checker to confirm whether a document falls under List A or List B.

For more detail on what penalties look like in practice, see our guide to illegal worker fines in the UK. If you employ British citizens, our guide to checking British citizens explains why the check still applies and what documents they can use.

Sources

• Code of Practice on Preventing Illegal Working (13 February 2024) — GOV.UK
• Right to work checklist — GOV.UK
• Penalties for employing illegal workers — GOV.UK
• Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, Section 15 — legislation.gov.uk