TUPE Transfers: The 60-Day Right to Work Window

TUPE right to work checks start the moment staff transfer to you: you inherit the previous employer's checks and any statutory excuse they established. You also inherit their errors. If the seller ran a check badly, the penalty lands on you — and there is no way to tell from the outside whether the checks were done properly.

That is why the employer's guide gives you a 60 calendar-day grace period from the date of the transfer to run fresh checks on everyone you acquired. It is one of the few deadlines in the right to work regime that is not triggered by an expiry date, which is exactly why it gets missed.

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

TUPE right to work checks: what you inherit, and what you carry

The employer's guide to right to work checks sets out the position in one passage:

"While TUPE regulations provide that right to work checks carried out by the transferor (the outgoing employer) are deemed to have been carried out by the employer who acquired the worker(s) (the incoming employer) and as such, the acquiring employer obtains the benefit of any statutory excuse established by the outgoing employer, if the outgoing employer did not conduct the original checks correctly, the acquiring employer would be liable for a penalty if a worker, who commenced work on or after 29 February 2008, is later found to be working illegally."

Read the last clause twice. The deeming provision transfers the benefit of a correctly established excuse. It does not manufacture one where the seller's process was defective. A missing date on a document copy, a passport page never copied, a share code check nobody saved — each of those means there was no excuse to inherit, and the liability is now yours.

The guide gives a second, practical reason to re-check: "a check by the acquiring employer may be the only way to determine when any follow-up check should be carried out in respect of workers with time-limited permission to work in the UK." You cannot diarise follow-ups for a workforce whose expiry dates you have never seen.

Its conclusion is a recommendation rather than a requirement, but the risk allocation makes it close to mandatory in practice: "employers who acquire staff as part of a TUPE transfer are advised to undertake a fresh right to work check on acquired workers."

The 60-day window

The guide acknowledges you cannot realistically check a transferred workforce before employment commences, because employment has already commenced. It recognises "there may be practical implications for undertaking checks in these circumstances before employment commences", so it gives "a 60 calendar-day grace period" running "from the date of the" relevant transfer, "during which the acquiring employer should conduct a fresh check. There is no grace period for any subsequent follow-up checks."

Three things to hold onto.

Calendar days, from the transfer date. Not working days, and not from completion of the wider deal if that is a different date.

It applies even in insolvency. The guide states that the grace period applies in all situations where there is a relevant transfer, "even if the transferring business is subject to “terminal” insolvency proceedings falling within regulation 8(7) of the 2006 TUPE Regulations", such as compulsory liquidation. Buying out of administration does not remove the window, and it does not extend it either.

It covers the initial re-check only. "There is no grace period for any subsequent follow-up checks." If someone you acquired has permission expiring 30 days after the transfer, that follow-up is due on its own timetable — you do not get 60 days for it.

What counts as a relevant transfer

The 60 days runs from a "relevant transfer" as defined in regulation 3 of the TUPE Regulations 2006. That covers more than a business sale. Regulation 3(1) applies the Regulations to:

"(a) a transfer of an undertaking, business or part of an undertaking or business situated immediately before the transfer in the United Kingdom to another person where there is a transfer of an economic entity which retains its identity; (b) a service provision change…"

The service-provision-change limb is the one businesses forget. Winning an outsourced contract, taking a service back in-house, or replacing an incumbent contractor can all be relevant transfers — and each of those brings a workforce whose right to work checks you have never seen and whose 60-day clock started the day the service changed hands.

It is also the narrower limb than it looks. Regulation 3(2A) limits it to activities "fundamentally the same as the activities carried out by the person who has ceased to carry them out" — if the new arrangement substantially changes what is being done, it is not a relevant transfer and the 60-day rule does not apply. Do not assume every re-tender or contract handover qualifies; check the activities match before you rely on the extended window.

When you do not need to re-check

One useful exception. Where the employer is the same entity and is only changing its legal status, the check does not need repeating. The guide gives examples, including a private limited company becoming a public limited company, a partnership becoming a limited company, and "a TUPE transfer within the same group of companies".

Its caveat is worth keeping: "where there is any doubt, it is recommended that the employer does conduct a right to work check to prevent risk of liability for a civil penalty in the case the individual(s) in question are found to be working illegally."

There is also a long-service carve-out. Employers are not required to have a statutory excuse for employment that commenced before 29 February 2008 where the individual has been in continuous employment since, and the guide confirms this includes where employment continued through a TUPE transfer.

Running the 60 days well

The failure mode here is not ignorance of the rule — it is that a transfer is a busy period and the clock is invisible. A practical sequence:

1. Fix the transfer date in writing on day one and count 60 calendar days forward. Put the resulting date somewhere a person will see it, not in a deal folder.
2. Ask the seller for their right to work records during due diligence, before completion if you can. You are not relying on them — you are finding out how big the re-check job is and whether any follow-ups fall inside the window.
3. Prioritise time-limited permissions. Anyone whose permission expires within or shortly after the 60 days needs checking first, because their follow-up has no grace period.
4. Check everyone, not just the visibly non-UK staff. Selective checking is discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010, s.13 (direct discrimination), and a transfer is precisely the moment a rushed process starts making assumptions. Our guide to right to work checks for British citizens covers why the exception people assume exists does not.
5. Record the checks as new checks, dated on the day you did them — not backdated to the transfer. The transfer date is the start of the window, not the date of your check.
6. Set every follow-up date as you go. Use the follow-up check timeline calculator to generate them from each expiry, and see the follow-up checks guide for what a compliant follow-up involves.
7. Audit at day 45, not day 59. A self-audit with two weeks left is recoverable. One with a day left is not.

The wider point about acquired workforces

Since 1 October 2026 the Right to Work Scheme has extended beyond contracts of employment to worker's contracts, individual sub-contractors and online matching services. Acquisitions and service-provision changes frequently bring casual and contracted labour with them, not just payroll staff.

The guide adds a point specific to those workers: the TUPE Regulations "do not apply to individuals engaged under a contract for services as workers". Where, on or after 1 October 2026, you enter into a new arrangement to engage such a worker following a change in the employer they work for, you "must conduct a right to work check before the employment commences" to have a statutory excuse — the 60-day window does not cover them. When you next map a transferred workforce, map all of it — see what changed on 1 October 2026 and the contractor chains guide for how liability now reaches sub-contracted labour.

The bottom line

TUPE transfers you the benefit of the seller's right to work checks only where those checks were done correctly, and you carry the penalty where they were not. You have 60 calendar days from the transfer date to run fresh checks, including where the business is in terminal insolvency proceedings, and there is no grace period for the follow-ups that come after. Count the 60 days on day one and work through the time-limited permissions first — that is where the exposure actually sits.

Sources

• Employer's guide to right to work checks — GOV.UK (quotations are from the final version that came into force on 1 October 2026; earlier versions, including the 26 June 2025 guide, are in the UK Government Web Archive)
• The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, reg 3 (current version) — legislation.gov.uk
• Equality Act 2010, s.13 — legislation.gov.uk