UK Right to Work Checks: New Rules for Workers, Subcontractors and Online Platform
From 1st October 2026, right to work compliance will no longer be confined to conventional employment relationships. Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 is commenced from that date, and it widens the illegal working civil penalty regime to cover certain workers, individual subcontractors and online matching services. Alongside that expansion, a new route to liability allows a civil penalty to reach businesses positioned higher up a contractual chain, even where they have no direct contract with the person doing the work.
For employers, recruitment agencies, labour suppliers, digital platforms and any business that outsources work, the central compliance question has changed. It is no longer simply whether employees have been checked. It is who is personally performing the work, under what arrangement that person has been engaged, and where in the chain the organisation might carry exposure.
The familiar principle still applies. A correctly completed prescribed check gives a statutory excuse against a civil penalty, but only where the applicable requirements are met before the work begins and, for those with time-limited permission, where appropriate repeat checks are carried out. What changes from October is the range of relationships to which that principle attaches.
What actually changes on 1 October 2026
Until 1st October, the scheme operates broadly as it has for years. The duty focuses on individuals employed under a contract of employment, the process usually sits within HR recruitment and onboarding, and the civil penalty risk rests most obviously with the direct employer. Many businesses have treated subcontracting, agency supply and platform engagement as sitting outside their ordinary right to work procedures, and until now that position has often been defensible.
From 1st October, the statutory concept of an employer is widened for right to work purposes. It captures a person who engages an individual under a worker’s contract, a person who engages an individual subcontractor, and an online matching service that provides an individual service provider’s details to potential clients or customers. Compliance therefore has to be considered across contingent work, contractor engagement, platform models and labour supply chains, rather than within recruitment alone.
Two points deserve emphasis from the outset: First, the label used in a contract will not be decisive. The Home Office expects organisations to consider how an arrangement actually operates in practice, not how it has been described on paper. Second, the financial exposure has not softened: a civil penalty can reach £60,000 per illegal worker for a repeat breach, which makes structural misjudgement an expensive mistake.
It is also worth noting the current state of the guidance. Section 48 is commenced by the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations 2026, so the date itself is settled. The revised employer’s guide and the revised code of practice on preventing illegal working have so far been published in draft form and refined following stakeholder feedback, with the existing employer’s guide continuing to apply until the new regime begins. Businesses should build their processes around the statutory duty and the draft documents together, then review once the final versions are issued.
Who is included in the updated regime
Individuals engaged under a worker’s contract
This category concerns personal service arrangements that fall short of traditional employment. The guidance describes a worker’s contract as one under which an individual personally undertakes to do work or perform services for another person, where that other person is not a client or customer of any profession or business genuinely carried on by the individual.
An employment business that engages a hospitality worker on a contract for services and supplies that worker for short shifts across bars and restaurants provides a straightforward illustration. From 1 October 2026, the employment business can be the party responsible for the prescribed right to work check for that individual.
Individual subcontractors
A business may also be in scope where an individual personally provides work or services in an arrangement connected with a contract the engaging party holds with a third party. The example most likely to resonate with clients is the delivery platform that allows an individual to log in, accept jobs and be paid per delivery. The Home Office guidance uses a comparable scenario to show that the platform may be treated as the employer for scheme purposes and required to check the individual’s right to work.
Online matching services
The guidance identifies three core characteristics. The organisation maintains a register of service providers in order to match them with clients or customers; it operates an online service through which those clients or customers submit matching enquiries; and it charges a fee or commission for arranging the match.
An online service that matches a cleaner with a homeowner and takes a commission for doing so may therefore fall within the expanded scheme, where the cleaner personally performs the service, and may be required to carry out the prescribed check.
Extended liability: the most significant compliance risk
The reforms introduce extended liability through a new section 15A of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. In defined circumstances, a person who has no direct contract with the individual doing the work may nevertheless be treated as employing that individual, and may face a civil penalty on that basis.
Three scenarios are set out in the guidance: The first is where a business is contracted to provide work or services to a third party and then contracts with another employer to supply the workers who will fulfil that contract. The second is where an online matching service connects a service provider with a client or customer, and the service provider then contracts directly with that client or customer. The third is where a worker’s contract permits substitution and a different individual performs the work.
The practical shape of this is easily illustrated. A facilities company wins a cleaning contract with a commercial landlord and subcontracts the labour element to another company, which supplies the cleaners. If one of those cleaners has no right to work, the analysis may not stop at the labour supplier. The company further up the chain may need to demonstrate that it complied with the prescribed contractual requirements in order to establish a statutory excuse against extended liability.
The assessment is fact-sensitive, and this is where over-confidence will cause difficulty. A standard subcontractor label, an agency agreement or an intermediary structure does not automatically place a business outside the scheme. The Home Office has been clear that no single factor is determinative, and that contractual terms must be read alongside the practical operation of the arrangement.
What does not change
Genuine independent businesses remain outside the scheme
The reforms are not intended to capture a person who operates an independent business in their own name or through their own company and contracts directly with customers for goods or services. A genuinely self-employed plumber who advertises to the public and serves multiple customers is not, for that reason alone, brought within the right to work scheme. Similarly, a business that commissions a defined project from a graphic designer’s personal service company is generally procuring services from that company rather than engaging the designer for scheme purposes.
The qualification matters as much as the principle. The presence of a company, a self-employed description or an intermediary is not conclusive. Where an individual is not truly operating an independent business, and the work is arranged through a platform, intermediary or labour supply model, the arrangement may still fall within scope.
Existing arrangements and the commencement position
The commencement provisions are important for businesses reviewing their current frameworks. The expanded civil penalty liability for worker’s contracts, individual subcontractors and online matching services applies where the relevant employment commenced on or after 1 October 2026. For extended liability, the prescribed contractual requirements apply where the relevant contractual arrangements were entered into on or after that date.
That does not mean pre-existing arrangements can be set aside. Renewals, new statements of work, fresh substitutions and changes within a supply chain all warrant careful attention, because a continuing commercial relationship may generate new engagements or new contracts that fall squarely on the wrong side of the commencement date.
The checking methods remain familiar
The routes to a statutory excuse will be recognisable to anyone who has run a compliant process. Before work begins, an organisation must use the applicable prescribed route: a manual check of original acceptable documents; a Home Office online check using the individual’s share code; a check completed through an eligible right to work Digital Verification Service Provider; or, where appropriate, verification through the Employer Checking Service.
Several practical points are worth building into training. Individuals holding an eVisa can only evidence their right to work through the Home Office online service. A manual check requires original documents, so a scan, a photograph or a document held up over a video call will not normally suffice. Digital evidence of an individual’s name and permanent National Insurance number may be accepted only in the circumstances specified in the guidance and alongside the appropriate acceptable document.
Employers must never ask an individual for the password to their personal digital records. And where a Digital Verification Service Provider is used, it must be one that is registered and authorised for right to work checks, because outsourcing the mechanics of the check does not remove the organisation’s underlying exposure if the check is carried out incorrectly.
Record keeping remains equally important. A time-limited statutory excuse requires a follow-up check where the individual will continue working beyond the expiry of their permission. Records of the check date and copies of the evidence should be retained securely for the duration of the engagement and for two years afterwards, and should be capable of being produced promptly if the Home Office asks for them.
Next Steps
October 2026 reforms are a structural change rather than a document-checking update. They bring non-traditional working arrangements and parts of the labour supply chain within the enforcement framework for the first time, and they create a route to liability that does not depend on a direct contractual relationship with the worker.
The period before implementation should be used to map workforces and supply chains, identify newly in-scope arrangements, update contractual controls, confirm the correct checking route for each model and train the teams who engage labour. Once an illegal working investigation is underway, it is too late to create a statutory excuse.
Train your team
If you would like to work through these obligations in practical detail, our live online course Right to Work Checks with Sacha Wooldridge sets out exactly what the revamped sponsorship scheme expects of UK sponsors and how those duties sit alongside the expanded right to work regime.
Sacha takes delegates through the practical considerations behind each obligation, so that you can be confident your procedures and processes will hold up and shares the latest insight into the approach the Home Office is taking to sponsor duties when it carries out a compliance review. The course is available for £65 however it is part of a special offer with our Sponsor Licence Masterclass course for only £99 for 2 courses. For more details, please visit HERE
Early booking is recommended; for enquiries, email enquiries@hjt-training.co.uk or call 07446466898.
Written by Shareen Khan , Legal Content Writer, HJT Training
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. The employer’s guide and the code of practice on preventing illegal working referred to above remain in draft at the date of writing and may be revised before 1 October 2026. Whether a particular working arrangement falls within the expanded scheme will depend on its own facts, and specific advice should be taken before any decision is made or acted upon.