Visa Expiry Dates: How UK Employers Can Track and Stay Compliant
The day a visa expires is not the day the problem starts. The problem starts months earlier, when you saved a copy of the visa to a folder on your laptop and never put the expiry date on a calendar.
Tracking visa expiry dates is the most under-rated compliance task in a small UK business. It is also the cheapest. Once a process exists, every check after that costs minutes — but until a process exists, every visa expiry is a coin toss between a renewed document and a missing statutory excuse.
This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on your specific situation, consult a qualified immigration solicitor.
Why visa expiry tracking matters
Under the right to work regime, you are responsible for knowing when each employee's permission to work in the UK ends, and for running a compliant follow-up check before that date. The defence that protects you from civil penalties — the statutory excuse — runs out on the same day the visa does, unless you have already verified ongoing right to work.
The current civil penalty rates for an employer who employs an illegal worker without a statutory excuse are set out on the Home Office penalties for employing illegal workers page: up to £45,000 per worker for a first breach and up to £60,000 per worker for a repeat breach within three years. A single missed expiry across three visa-holding employees is, in the worst case, a six-figure exposure. See our illegal worker fines guide for how those numbers compose in practice.
Tracking visa expiries is what turns that risk from a coin toss into a non-event.
Where the expiry date actually lives
There is no single place to look — different document types display the expiry differently:
Vignette in a passport (entry clearance vignette). Look at the visa sticker in the passport. The expiry date is printed alongside the visa category. Note that this is the date the vignette expires; the underlying permission may run for longer once the employee has collected their eVisa or status update.
eVisa (digital immigration status). Since the BRP transition completed at the end of 2024, most visa holders prove right to work via an eVisa rather than a physical document. The expiry date appears on the share-code result page when you run an online check. See our eVisa right to work checks guide for the full mechanics. Use the view a job applicant's right to work details service to view the expiry alongside their permission status.
Status letter or grant notification. For employees with EU Settlement Scheme status or other digital grants, the Home Office grant letter states the duration of permission. Pre-settled status currently runs for 5 years from grant; settled status is permanent. Always rely on the digital status (via share code) rather than the letter for the live picture.
Application Registration Card or Certificate of Application. These do not display a final expiry — they cover the period while a substantive application is decided. The follow-up obligation runs every 6 months from the most recent Positive Verification Notice, not from a date printed on the card.
Biometric Residence Permit. BRPs expired on 31 December 2024. If you still have a copy on file, treat it as a historical record only — current right to work proof must come via eVisa or share code. Direct the employee to set up their eVisa if they have not already.
The pattern across all of these: the expiry date is real, it is knowable on the day you do the check, and it is also very easy to lose if you do not deliberately capture it.
How to find the expiry on a share-code result
The share-code-based check is now the default for most visa-holding employees. The result page from the view a job applicant's right to work details service shows:
- The employee's name and date of birth
- A photograph
- A statement of their right to work (e.g. "the named person has the right to work in the UK with no restrictions" or "until [date]")
- The date until which the right to work is valid (the expiry date for follow-up purposes)
- Any conditions (e.g. weekly working hours)
Save the result by following the on-screen "save a copy" / print option. The saved file is your evidence of the check and your record of the expiry date. Capture the expiry date into your tracking system immediately — do not rely on coming back to the saved file later.
A minimal viable tracking system
A spreadsheet is enough for a business with five to fifteen employees. The principle matters more than the tool — record the same information for every employee, and review it on a fixed cadence.
One row per employee, with at minimum:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Full name | Identification — match against payroll |
| Date of birth | Required for ECS contact and share-code verification |
| Document type / list (A, B Group 1, B Group 2) | Determines whether a follow-up is needed |
| Initial check date | Start of the audit trail |
| Permission expiry date (List B Group 1) | Drives the follow-up due date |
| Last Positive Verification Notice date (List B Group 2) | Drives the 6-month cycle |
| Next follow-up due date | The date you actually need on a calendar |
| Reminder dates (90 / 30 / 7 days before) | Forces ahead-of-time action |
| Last check method (physical / share code / ECS) | Audit trail |
| Notes | Anything unusual — pending application, delay, ECS chase |
Then:
- Lock the next-follow-up cell as a formula where you can. If the spreadsheet computes "next follow-up = expiry date" or "= last PVN + 6 months", a typo in one cell does not silently create a gap.
- Set calendar reminders separate from the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets do not push notifications. A monthly review meeting with yourself, plus diary entries on the 90/30/7-day milestones, is what makes the system work.
- Review monthly, not quarterly. Quarterly review is enough to catch missed quarterly cycles; it is not enough to catch a Group 2 6-month cycle that was already late when you opened the file.
Plan the actual follow-up schedule for any individual visa expiry using our follow-up check timeline calculator — it generates the 90/30/7-day reminder dates and applies the 6-month rule for Group 2 employees.
Common mistakes when tracking visa expiry dates
Treating the vignette date as the permission date. The vignette in a passport is travel authorisation. The underlying permission may extend further. Always cross-check via a share code if there is any doubt about the live status.
Not recording the document type. Without "List A / List B Group 1 / List B Group 2" on file, the next person who runs the follow-up has no way to know whether one is even due. The list classification is the single most-important field after the date itself.
Recording the date the visa was issued. Issue dates and expiry dates are both on most documents. They are not interchangeable. Record the expiry.
Using one calendar entry on the expiry day. A single calendar reminder on the day a visa expires is a single point of failure. Multiple reminders, days apart, give the process resilience.
Conflating expiry with grace period. The 28-day grace period only applies in specific circumstances — see the 28-day grace period guide. It is not a routine extension, and assuming "I have 28 extra days" is the most common way micro-employers walk into a penalty.
Not updating the system after a renewal. A renewed visa generates a new expiry date. If the spreadsheet still shows the old one, the next follow-up is scheduled against an out-of-date target. Update the row the same day you do the check.
When tracking gets harder than a spreadsheet
If you are tracking more than about 15 visa-holding employees, or if you have employees in more than one of the document categories at once, a spreadsheet starts to fail in predictable ways:
- Formulas get edited and silently break
- Rows are duplicated or sorted incorrectly
- Reminders depend on whoever owns the file remembering to look at it
- Audit trail is whatever versioning the spreadsheet happens to have
At that point a dedicated tool starts to earn its keep — see our guide to right to work check software for what to evaluate.
A short pre-flight before each follow-up
Before you run a follow-up check, take 60 seconds to:
- Confirm the document type and list on file matches what is current. Has the employee moved from a pending Certificate of Application to a granted status? Is what was a Group 1 visa now a Group 2 pending appeal?
- Check that the share-code result the employee is sending is fresh — codes are valid for 90 days from generation, but in practice older codes are more likely to have been superseded by an updated status.
- Verify the employee's name and date of birth in your system match the share-code result page exactly. A mismatch can turn a routine follow-up into an audit-trail problem.
- Have your tracking row open before you start so you can record the new expiry date immediately, not "later".
These four checks take a minute. They are also the easiest place to catch the cases where the visa landscape has moved on between hire and follow-up.
Where this fits in the wider compliance lifecycle
Visa expiry tracking is the operational heart of follow-up right to work checks. The initial check tells you which employees have time-limited permission and which list they sit on. The expiry-tracking system tells you when to act. The follow-up check itself, the share-code process, and the 28-day grace period handle the moments of action.
For the full lifecycle view, see the employer's guide to ongoing right to work compliance.
The visas your employees hold will keep changing. The fact that some of them have expiry dates, and that you are responsible for noticing, will not.