Right to Work Checks Are Expanding: What Every UK Business Needs to Know Before 1 October 2026
A significant and often underestimated change to UK employment law takes effect on 1 October 2026. Under Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, the obligation to carry out Right to Work (RTW) checks will expand well beyond traditional employment relationships. Businesses that use agency workers, subcontractors or online platforms to source labour and businesses that supply workers to others need to act now.
The consequences of non-compliance are serious: civil penalties of up to £60,000 per illegal worker, potential criminal liability for deliberate breaches, and reputational damage that can follow a Home Office enforcement visit.
This article explains what is changing, who is affected, and what your business needs to do before 1 October 2026.
What the law currently requires
Under the current regime, the obligation to conduct Right to Work checks applies only to traditional employers those engaging workers under a contract of employment or apprenticeship. That means businesses using contractors, subcontractors, agency workers or gig economy arrangements have generally fallen outside the mandatory checking framework, even where an individual is personally carrying out work on their behalf.
This created a significant gap. Modern labour markets particularly in construction, care, hospitality, logistics and technology routinely operate through multi-party contractual structures. The Home Office has long been aware that these structures were being used, sometimes deliberately, to avoid the right to work regime.
What changes on 1 October 2026
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 closes that gap. From 1 October 2026, the Right to Work regime extends to three additional categories of working arrangement:
Workers' contracts. Individuals engaged under a "worker's contract" that is, someone who is not an employee but has agreed to perform work or services personally, and who is not doing so as part of their own genuinely independent business will now be in scope. This covers a wide range of arrangements including casual workers, zero-hours workers and many gig economy participants.
Individual subcontractors in chains. Where an individual personally provides work or services through a chain of contracts for example, a subcontractor engaged by an agency which in turn has a contract with an end-user the obligation to carry out RTW checks falls on the party with the direct contractual relationship with that individual. Critically, a party higher up the chain may also be treated as employing the individual regardless of how many contractual layers exist between them.
Online matching platforms. Platforms that connect individual service providers with clients for remuneration are also brought into scope where those platforms are a party to contracts that result in an individual personally performing work.
The changes apply only to arrangements entered into on or after 1 October 2026. Existing arrangements are not affected retrospectively, but businesses should note that any renewal, variation or new engagement after that date will be caught.
Who is excluded
Genuinely self-employed individuals operating their own independent business remain outside the scope of the extended regime. The distinction turns on whether the individual is personally providing their own labour or running a business in their own right.
End-users businesses that commission completed services for their own internal use (for example, a company that hires a cleaning firm, engages a consultant or contracts for IT support) without involving the onward supply of workers are also generally excluded. The liability falls on those within the supply chain who are passing labour services onward.
This distinction matters but can be fact-specific. A business that believes it sits at the end of a supply chain as a passive end-user should take legal advice to confirm that characterisation holds in practice.
Supply chain liability: the critical point for businesses
The most significant feature of the expanded regime and the one most businesses are not yet ready for is supply chain liability.
Under the new rules, where workers are supplied through a chain of contractual relationships, responsibility for RTW checks rests with the party that has the direct contractual relationship with the worker. But the legislation also provides that a party higher up the chain may be treated as employing the individual who personally provides the work, regardless of how long the chain is.
In practical terms, this means that if you engage an agency that subcontracts to a second agency that engages an individual worker, you cannot assume the check has been done by someone else in the chain. You need contractual protections that require every party below you to conduct compliant checks, and you need to be able to demonstrate those protections if the Home Office investigates.
Establishing a statutory excuse
The right to work regime operates on the basis of a statutory excuse: if you carry out a compliant RTW check before the individual begins work and retain the evidence, you have a defence against civil penalty even if the individual later turns out to have been working illegally.
Under the expanded regime, establishing a statutory excuse for supply chain arrangements requires more than simply checking the worker yourself. To protect your position, you will need written contractual terms with your direct counterparty that require compliant RTW checks to be carried out on individuals personally performing the work or services, controls preventing unauthorised subcontracting, audit rights allowing you to inspect RTW compliance records, and the ability to suspend or terminate the agreement if illegal working is suspected.
You will also need proportionate systems and processes to ensure that the individual who actually carries out the work is the same person whose right to work was checked. The Home Office has indicated that identity verification methods — such as access passes, facial recognition or biometric checks — may be relevant to demonstrating this.
Personal Service Companies
The position of Personal Service Companies (PSCs) deserves specific attention, particularly in light of the interaction with IR35 rules. Where a director of a PSC personally performs the work, a RTW check must be carried out on that individual director before the assignment begins. Where the contract permits substitution and a substitute will carry out the work instead, a RTW check must be carried out on the substitute before they begin and this check cannot be delegated back to the PSC itself.
Businesses engaging contractors through PSCs should review their standard onboarding procedures to ensure they capture this correctly.
Updated discrimination protections
Alongside the extension of RTW obligations, the updated Code of Practice reinforces that employers and businesses must not treat individuals less favourably because they hold time-limited permission to work in the UK or because they use an eVisa rather than a physical document. Requiring a person with a valid eVisa to produce a physical document, or treating a worker on a time-limited visa differently from a settled worker at the point of engagement, could amount to unlawful discrimination.
As right to work checks extend to new categories of workers, care must be taken to ensure that enhanced scrutiny or additional requirements are not applied selectively to workers who appear to be foreign nationals.
Who is most affected
While the changes affect a wide range of businesses, the sectors and business types with the most immediate exposure are those that routinely use labour supply chains, subcontract work to individuals, use staffing agencies or online platforms to source workers, operate in construction, care, hospitality, logistics or professional services, or act as an intermediary supplying workers to end-users.
Any business that has previously taken comfort from the fact that it does not directly employ its workers should treat 1 October 2026 as the date by which its compliance framework must be reviewed and updated.
What your business should do now
The time to act is before 1 October, not after an enforcement visit. Businesses should begin by mapping all their labour categories employees, workers, individual contractors, agency-supplied staff, platform workers and subcontractors and identifying which of those arrangements will fall within the extended regime from October. The next step is to review existing supplier and agency contracts to confirm whether they contain adequate RTW, audit and subcontracting provisions, and to update those contracts where they do not.
Onboarding processes and checklists should be updated to capture the new categories of worker, and HR, procurement and operations teams should receive training on how the extended regime works and what a compliant check looks like. Finally, businesses should assess whether their identity verification processes are sufficiently robust for supply chain arrangements, and whether there is a clear audit trail capable of demonstrating compliance to the Home Office.
How Visa Professionals can help
Right to Work compliance sits at the intersection of immigration law and employment law. Getting it wrong carries consequences for the business, for individual directors and managers, and for sponsor licence holders whose licences depend on a track record of compliance.
Visa Professionals advises businesses on all aspects of Right to Work compliance, including the changes taking effect on 1 October 2026. We can review your existing labour arrangements and contracts, advise on whether particular arrangements are in scope, help draft compliant contractual provisions, and advise sponsor licence holders on how the extended regime interacts with their existing compliance obligations.
If your business uses agency workers, subcontractors or online platforms, or if you supply workers to others, contact Visa Professionals now — before 1 October 2026.
Important: This article provides general information only. The right to work regime is complex and the effect of the changes on any particular business will depend on the specific facts of its labour arrangements. Specific legal advice should be obtained before taking action in reliance on this article.