Right to Work · A Practitioner's Guide
Written by our compliance team from casework across British retail — stores, franchises, concessions and staffing agencies. Last reviewed August 2026.
Under section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, it is a criminal and civil offence to employ a person who does not have the right to work in the UK. The duty applies to every employer — a fashion boutique with two staff carries the same obligation as a national chain.
The check must be completed before employment begins. There is no grace period, and the check must be conducted correctly at the time. A check performed after the worker's first shift does not create the statutory excuse.
Workers with digital immigration status — including most EU citizens who arrived after 1 January 2021, and those who hold status granted via the gov.uk system — verify their right to work through the online checking service. The worker generates a share code, which the employer uses on gov.uk to view their status in real time.
Workers who hold physical documents — a British or Irish passport, a Biometric Residence Permit, a certificate of naturalisation — are checked against the Home Office's prescribed list. A valid document check has three parts:
This is where retail errors most often happen: a rushed festive-season check, a photocopy in place of an original, a BRP accepted a week after expiry. Each error voids the statutory excuse.
A correctly conducted check creates the statutory excuse — a complete defence against a civil penalty. Since February 2024 the maximum civil penalty for employing an illegal worker is £45,000 per worker for a first breach, and £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches. For a store hiring fifty staff in a season, the arithmetic writes itself.
Relevant employers — a category that includes most established businesses — can also face criminal prosecution for knowingly employing an illegal worker, with penalties of up to five years' imprisonment.
Some workers have time-limited permission to work. When it expires, the employer must conduct a follow-up check. We track every time-limited status in a renewal calendar, so expiry is flagged to the store manager before it becomes a compliance breach.
You send the role and start date. The worker completes their part from any device. Our compliance team — trained to Home Office guidance, with casework spanning thousands of retail hires — performs the prescribed check and files the audit-ready record. You receive the result within 24 hours, and your register is always inspection-ready.