BookKeptevidence chain
Documentation

Right-to-work records

A right-to-work check establishes a statutory excuse only if it was done properly and can be shown. The record therefore holds the method, the evidence, the date it was checked and the date it needs checking again.

The three methods

The copy the guide says to keep, a scan or a photo of the document, the saved online check, the provider's output, is uploaded with the check and stored with a retention category and a retention date, because the Home Office employer's guide expects it kept for the duration of employment plus two years and no longer. It sits in the worker's file, in the document library and in the evidence pack, and the check itself says whether a copy is held.

Recheck dates

A check on time-limited permission carries a recheck date. The compliance screen surfaces what is due, and the change radar counts anyone whose recheck falls after a statutory change as exposed to it.

1 October 2026

SI 2026/700, the Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, was laid on 30 June 2026 and is in force from 1 October 2026. It amends the Immigration (Restrictions on Employment) Order 2007.

The change that matters most to an agency is scope. The right-to-work scheme is extended beyond traditional employees to the wider working arrangements contract staffing actually uses, so people an agency previously treated as outside the regime are inside it. Digital checks run through a Home Office registered right-to-work digital verification service provider, the RtW DVSP, which is the terminology the Home Office draft guide of 16 July 2026 uses.

Two further duties have been widely discussed for this instrument: a mandatory facial-image record on a digital check, and a supply-chain statement. Neither appears in the draft employer's guide as published, so this product does not treat either as required and will not refuse a check for want of one. Both are held as optional evidence, because an agency may reasonably choose to keep them and because the final code of practice may yet ask for them. When it does, that arrives as a dated rule pack rather than a release.

None of that is a release. The duties arrive because a rule pack dated 1 October 2026 becomes the answer on that day. The guide sets out the change itself.

What the change radar does with it

The radar pairs each dated change with your own exposure: for right to work, the workers with no check on file at all, plus those whose recheck falls due on or after the effective date. It names them, rather than telling you a change is coming and leaving you to work out who it touches.

See it working

Who this change actually touches

The demo agency is exposed to the October change through two named workers. Open compliance and look at what is changing.

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