From 1 October 2026 the right to work check duty widens well beyond employees. Here is what stays the same, what changes, and who is newly caught — with the current rules and the new ones kept clearly apart.
The statutory check duty applies to employees. Three routes (manual, online share code, certified digital identity for British/Irish passport holders). Civil penalty up to £45,000 / £60,000 per worker.
The duty expands to people under a worker’s contract, individual subcontractors, and workers via online matching services. Digital identity checks must use a registered provider.
Under the rules in force today, the statutory duty to carry out a right to work check — and the statutory excuse it earns — is centred on employees. An employer checks each new employee before they start, using one of the three prescribed routes, and keeps the dated evidence. Businesses that engage self-employed contractors or agency labour manage those relationships commercially, but the statutory check duty has not extended to them in the same way. The civil penalty for getting it wrong is up to £45,000 per worker (first breach) and £60,000 (repeat within three years). Everything on our right to work checks for employers guide describes this current regime.
The headline change is who must be checked. From 1 October 2026 the duty extends beyond employees to cover people engaged under a worker’s contract, individual subcontractors, and workers obtained through online matching-service arrangements (the kind of platform and labour-sourcing models used across the gig economy and construction supply chains). The expanded civil-penalty exposure applies to relevant engagements beginning on or after 1 October 2026. Separately, where the digital identity route is used, the identity element must be carried out by a registered Right to Work Digital Verification Service provider using the prescribed process. The three checking routes themselves, the record-retention rule and the penalty amounts otherwise carry over.1
If you engage individual subcontractors, use labour providers or online matching platforms, or take on people under worker’s contracts rather than full employment, these are the engagements to look at now. In practice it pushes right to work into the same territory as contractor onboarding and worker compliance: the people you need evidence for is a bigger, more mixed population than just payroll employees, and the records need to be consistent across all of them.
Digital identity verification has been part of the right to work landscape for British and Irish passport holders for some time. What the new regime formalises is that, where that route is used, it must go through a registered/certified provider meeting the relevant requirements to obtain the statutory excuse. Our digital right to work checks guideexplains how the identity route fits with the online share-code and manual routes — and why identity verification is not the same thing as an immigration-status decision.
Map every category of person who does work for you — employees, workers, individual subcontractors, agency and platform-sourced labour — and decide how each will be checked and evidenced from 1 October. Make sure the process is applied consistently to avoid discrimination, that follow-up dates for time-limited permission are tracked, and that the evidence is retained for the duration of the engagement plus two years. A single place to hold that evidence and chase expiries — across employees and contractors alike — is what keeps a wider check population manageable.
The three newly-in-scope categories are worth unpacking. A worker’s contract captures people who are not full employees but work personally for you under an arrangement that is more than a purely business-to-business contract — a population many organisations have never run statutory right to work checks on. An individual subcontractor is a self-employed person you engage directly to do work personally, common across construction and the trades. An online matching-service arrangement covers the platform and app-based models — and labour-sourcing intermediaries — that connect a worker to the business that ultimately uses their labour. The common thread is that the government is closing the gap between “employee” and the many other ways people are actually engaged to work.
There is a straightforward way to prepare. Map every category of person who does work for you and mark which are newly in scope. Decide the route for each — manual, online share code, or certified digital identity — and make sure it is applied consistently so no group is singled out. Build in the check at the start of each engagement beginning on or after 1 October, not after it has begun. Track follow-up dates for anyone with time-limited permission. And retain the evidencefor the duration of the engagement plus two years. Doing this once, across employees and contractors together, is far less work than discovering a gap later.
Because this is a dated change, precision matters. Until 30 September 2026, the statutory check duty is centred on employees and you should not describe the wider duty as already in force. From 1 October 2026, the expanded duty applies to relevant engagements beginning on or after that date. When you brief managers or update your onboarding, keep those two states clearly separate rather than blending them into a single “the rules say” — the commencement date is exactly the sort of detail an enforcement review will care about.
The expansion also reaches into your contracts. If you rely on labour providers, agencies or online platforms, now is the time to review what those arrangements say about who carries out right to work checks and what evidence flows to you. Where you engage individual subcontractors directly, you will need your own check and record for each — you cannot simply assume the intermediary has done it. Practically, that means asking your suppliers how they will evidence right to work for the people they place with you from 1 October, and making sure your own onboarding captures a check for any subcontractor or worker you engage directly. Treat it as a supply-chain and contractual question, not only an HR one.
It is just as important to know what stays the same, so you do not over-correct. The three checking routes— manual, online share code, and certified digital identity for British and Irish passport holders — carry over. The record-retention rule (duration of the engagement plus two years) is unchanged. The civil-penalty amounts are unchanged. And the requirement to check consistently and without discrimination applies exactly as before. What changes is the range of engagements the duty covers and the formalised digital-identity provider requirement — not the mechanics of how you check or how long you keep the evidence.
Complys keeps right to work evidence, its expiry dates and the wider worker record in one place across your whole workforce, employees and contractors, with reminders before permission lapses. It does not perform the check, verify identity or status, or act as a digital verification provider — those remain your responsibility through the prescribed routes, with digital identity verification a coming, provider-dependent capability on our side rather than something to rely on today. See Right to Work compliance software.
No. Until 30 September 2026 the current rules apply. The expanded duty takes effect on 1 October 2026 for relevant engagements beginning on or after that date.
From 1 October 2026 the duty extends to individual subcontractors and certain worker and online-matching arrangements. Confirm which of your engagements are caught against the final Home Office guidance before relying on this.
The civil-penalty amounts (up to £45,000 first breach / £60,000 repeat, per worker) carry over; what widens is the range of engagements to which the check duty and that exposure apply.
1 Plain-English summary of an incoming change, not legal advice. The updated employer guidance was published in draft for the regime commencing 1 October 2026; the digital-identity element is set out in supplementary right to work / right to rent codes. Confirm the final versions on or after commencement. Sources: Employer’s guide to right to work checks (GOV.UK). Reviewed 26 September 2026.
