Right to Work Checks in 2026: What UK Employers Must Get Right

Right to Work (RTW) checks are the single most audited part of UK hiring. Get them wrong and you lose the statutory excuse — the legal defence against a civil penalty that now sits at up to £60,000 per illegal worker.

The three routes you can use in 2026

Home Office guidance recognises three valid ways to establish a Right to Work:

• A manual check of an original document from List A or List B, in the physical presence of the worker.
• An online check using a Home Office share code for anyone with an eVisa, BRP or pre-settled / settled status.
• A digital identity check (IDVT) through a certified Identity Service Provider, for British and Irish citizens with a valid passport.

Manual checks remain valid but are the slowest and most error-prone. Most regulated employers have moved to IDVT plus share codes as their default.

Where teams still get caught out

• Accepting a screenshot of a share code page instead of running the check live on gov.uk.
• Missing the follow-up check for time-limited permission before it expires.
• Failing to record the date the check was carried out on the personnel file.
• Treating an EU passport on its own as evidence — since 1 July 2021 it isn't.

How TalentClouds handles it

Every candidate is routed through the correct check automatically: British and Irish citizens go through IDVT, everyone else generates a share code inside the flow. The audit trail — document, timestamp, IDSP certificate, share code result — is stitched into a single record you can hand straight to a Home Office auditor.