Skip to content
RTWComply

Right to Work Checks for Gig and Casual Workers

By Brian CrockerLast reviewed: 5 October 2026

Since 1 October 2026, right to work checks gig economy engagements look different from the checks you run for employees. If you engage people who are not on a contract of employment — casual staff, zero-hours workers, individual contractors, platform workers — the question is no longer "are they an employee?" but "does this arrangement fall inside the Right to Work Scheme?". Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 answers that with three new categories: engagement under a worker's contract, engagement of an individual sub-contractor, and an online matching service providing a service provider's details to customers.

This guide is the scope test. It is not about how to run a check — the three prescribed methods are unchanged — it is about working out which of the people who do work for you are now people you have to check.

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 gig economy scope: the three new categories, in the Act's own words

Section 48 inserts a new section 14A into the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. The definitions are tight, and worth reading rather than paraphrasing.

A worker's contract is:

"a contract, other than a contract of service or apprenticeship, under which— (a) individual A undertakes to do or perform personally work or services for person A or another person (whether or not that other person is specified in the contract), and (b) person A is neither a client nor customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by individual A"

Two limbs, both of which have to be satisfied. The work must be performed personally, and you must not be a client or customer of a business the individual runs.

An individual sub-contractor is:

"an individual ('individual B') who has entered into a contract with person B to provide work or services in circumstances where person B has entered into a contract with a third party to provide, or arrange for the provision of, the work or services but individual B has not"

An online matching service is a person who, in the course of a business, does all three of these:

"(a) keeps a register of service providers for the purpose of matching them with potential clients or customers, (b) provides an online service by which potential clients or customers can submit enquiries for the purpose of being matched with suitable service providers, and (c) charges a fee or commission in return for making such matches"

All three limbs, not any one of them. A directory that charges nothing is not caught by this definition; a matching business that takes commission is.

Worked examples: in scope

The Home Office's guidance for the new regime works through the categories with examples. These are the ones that map onto how most UK businesses actually engage people.

An employment business supplying temporary staff. Someone registers with an employment business that supplies temporary workers to bars and restaurants, is engaged on a contract for services, and accepts short assignments when offered. The guidance places the employment business as the employer for right to work purposes — it is responsible for the check and can be liable for the penalty if that worker is working illegally on an assignment.

A delivery platform. An individual signs up through a delivery app, logs in when they want to work, accepts delivery requests and is paid per delivery. The platform is the employer for right to work purposes under the individual sub-contractor limb.

An online matching service. A homeowner uses a matching service to find a cleaner; the service matches a cleaner, and the cleaner does the work at the customer's home. The matching service — not the homeowner — is the cleaner's employer for right to work purposes, and carries the check obligation.

The pattern across all three: the business that arranged the work carries the duty, even where the money, the direction and the day-to-day relationship look nothing like employment.

Worked examples: not in scope

The change is broad, but it does not sweep in every commercial relationship.

A genuinely independent trader. A member of the public engages a self-employed plumber to fix a tap. The plumber advertises to the public, works for many customers, and is operating an independent business. No right to work check is required — this is the purchase of a service, not the employment of an individual.

A personal service company. A graphic designer is engaged by a client company through the designer's own limited company, which contracts with the client and invoices in the company's name. The guidance treats this as a business-to-business services arrangement rather than the employment of an individual, so the client company is not required to check.

Section 14A excludes this at the definition stage — a worker's contract only exists where "person A is neither a client nor customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by individual A". Subsection (4) does further work for tri-partite arrangements where the individual performs the work for someone other than the engager.

The test that decides it: substance, not label

This is the part to take seriously, because it cuts across how a lot of UK businesses have documented their contractor relationships. The final guidance, as the Home Office published it on 1 October 2026, puts it this way:

"Consideration should be given to the substance of the arrangements and how they operate in practice. The contractual description or label adopted by the parties involved will not, by itself, determine what responsibilities may arise under the Scheme."

It then lists the factors to weigh — who personally does the work, who engages or supplies the individuals, whether substitution is permitted, what the contracts say and how they operate in practice — and adds that "No single factor is determinative."

On intermediaries it is more guarded than the July 2026 draft was. That draft said individuals obtaining work through an intermediary, platform or similar arrangement, where they are not operating an independent business in their own right, remained within scope. The final text, like the September 2026 draft before it, says they "may still fall within scope of the Scheme depending upon the nature of the arrangement". The platform case has not gone away — its own delivery-platform example is still in scope — but the answer turns on how the arrangement works, not on the presence of a platform.

So a contract that says "self-employed contractor" does not settle the question. The practical test is closer to this:

  • Does this person do the work personally, or can they genuinely deploy their own staff to it?
  • Are they selling to a market, or effectively working for you?
  • Did you (or a platform) arrange the work, or did the customer engage them directly as a business?

If the honest answers point to personal service arranged by you, treat the engagement as in scope and check.

The date that limits your exposure

Liability for these new categories is not retrospective. The guidance states that for engagement under a worker's contract, as an individual sub-contractor, or through an online matching service, a civil penalty may only be imposed where the employment commenced on or after 1 October 2026 — and so does the revised Code of practice, which SI 2026/700 brought into force on that date.

That is a practical planning point, not a licence to leave existing arrangements unexamined. It means your compliance effort should focus first on the engagement process for new casual, contractor and platform workers from 1 October, rather than on a retrospective sweep of everyone already on the books.

What running the check actually involves

Little is new here, which is the good news. The three prescribed methods are the same three as before: a manual document-based check, a Home Office online check, or a check using a registered right to work digital verification service provider (RtW DVSP). One change is that the final employer's guide to right to work checks lets a registered provider go beyond British and Irish passports: it may also "verify acceptable documents from List A and List B of Annex A when and where they are available from the issuing authority in a digital format". Our new starter checklist walks the sequence, and the documents list sets out which list each acceptable document falls under.

Two things do get harder at volume, and they are worth designing for from the start:

Timing. The check must be complete before the person does any work. With casual and platform engagements, "before they start" can mean a shift accepted at short notice. A process that assumes a week's onboarding lead time will fail here. Front-load the check to registration or onboarding, not to the first assignment.

Follow-ups. Time-limited permissions do not become less time-limited because the engagement is casual. A worker with a visa expiring in March needs a follow-up check before March whether they are on a contract of employment or picking up two shifts a month. The follow-up check timeline calculator generates the dates from the expiry, and the ongoing compliance guide covers what a compliant follow-up looks like.

A short scope audit you can run now

  1. Write down every way a person can end up doing work for you. Payroll, agency, casual bank, individual contractors, sub-contracted crews, platform-sourced providers, substitutes.
  2. For each, ask the two worker's-contract limbs: is the work performed personally, and are you a client or customer of a business they run?
  3. Flag anything sourced through an intermediary or platform — those may well fall in scope unless the individual is genuinely running their own business, so assess each on how it works in practice.
  4. Separate out the true business-to-business arrangements — independent traders serving a market, and personal service companies invoicing you as a company.
  5. For everything left, check whether a right to work check exists. Where it does not, and the engagement began on or after 1 October 2026, that is the gap to close first.
  6. Look for substitution clauses while you are in the contracts. A right to send someone else in your place is a separate route into liability and needs its own controls.

The bottom line

From 1 October 2026, worker's contracts, individual sub-contractors and online matching services fall inside the Right to Work Scheme. The test is how the arrangement works in practice, not what the contract calls it: personal service that you or a platform arranged is in scope; a genuine independent business selling you a service is not. Liability applies to engagements commencing on or after that date. Read the full summary of what changed on 1 October 2026 for the wider picture, then audit your own list of engagement types — that is the work that has to happen first.

Sources

Stop tracking visa expiry dates in spreadsheets

RTWcomply will automate follow-up check reminders, visa expiry tracking, and build your Home Office audit trail. Join the waitlist for early access.

No spam. Unsubscribe any time. Privacy policy

Related guides

Right to Work Training: What It Actually Buys

Right to work training does not lower the standard you are judged against. What it does buy is worth more, and some of the material costs nothing.

HMRC Right to Work Checks: What HMRC Doesn't Do

HMRC does not run right to work checks — the Home Office does. What HMRC's role really is, and why a National Insurance number proves less than employers think.

Failed Right to Work Check: What to Do Next

A failed right to work check is usually two different situations. How to tell them apart, when to use the Employer Checking Service, and what the notices mean.