Right to Work Checks: Be Compliant

On 23 July 2025, the BBC issued a news article highlighting a case where a chip shop owner was fined £40,000 for hiring an illegal worker. The article can be accessed here. The article highlights the importance of undertaking compliant right to work checks and confirms that the immigration authorities are actively seeking to enforce non-compliance.

The BBC article notes that the chip shop owner had received [what he thought to be] all necessary paperwork relating to one of his workers, including a British passport and evidence of student loan repayments. The owner didn’t think there were any ‘red flags’.

Despite the owner believing he’d done everything necessary, the British passport checked turned out to be fraudulent. The owner subsequently received a notification stating that he was liable for a £40,000 fine, which had been reduced by £5,000 due to his cooperation with the immigration authorities. The early repayment scheme meant the fine was further reduced to £28,000 due to the owner’s prompt payment.

What can employers do to ensure they remain compliant with right to work procedures?

No matter what size your business is, organisations in the UK must ensure that compliant right to work procedures are followed. If a compliant right to work check is undertaken (including, where necessary, follow-up checks), an employer will benefit from a statutory excuse to a civil penalty being imposed, even if the worker is later found not to have the right to work.

For British passport holders, employers can either accept an original passport which must be reviewed in the presence of the worker (in-person or by videocall), or have the document verified via the Digital Verification Service (DVS).

In the context of right to work checks, DVS helps employers to obtain evidence of the worker’s identity, checking it is valid and that it belongs to the individual providing it. Using DVS will ensure only legitimate British or Irish passports are relied on, so could have assisted the chip shop owner in this case, although employers would need to pay a DVS provider for the service. Furthermore, even if DVS is used, employers still need to undertake an imposter check upon receipt of the DVS output, to ensure the holder of the document reviewed by DVS is the individual who turns up to work. This imposter check must be done in-person or by video call.

Of course, using DVS isn’t mandatory; for employers who review original British or Irish passports themselves, they should familiarise themselves with UKVI guidance on examining identity documents. In relation to fraudulent documents, if an original document is provided to a UK employer, the employer will only lose a statutory defence to an illegal working civil penalty if it is “reasonably apparent that it is false”. UKVI right to work guidance confirms this means that, “…a person who is untrained in the identification of false documents, examining it carefully, but without the use of technological aids could reasonably be expected to realise that the document in question is not genuine”.

UKVI guidance on fraudulent documents can be accessed here. UKVI right to work guidance also contains links to images of documents that may be of assistance to those undertaking right to work checks.

Employers should also remember that original passports cannot be provided by all workers; different processes will need to be followed by workers who are not British or Irish. This could involve employers accepting (and checking) a share code, undertaking an Employer Checking Service (ECS) check, or sometimes accepting a valid vignette contained in a valid passport.

In addition to following strict right to work procedures, it is important that UK employers stay up to date in relation to forthcoming changes; the government is planning to expand the UK’s right to work scheme to self-employed contractors in the future (see our blog post about this here).

JMW can support UK businesses with undertaking right to work checks; we can provide training to HR teams and also support HR teams undertaking right to work checks. If you have any questions regarding right to work checks, do not hesitate to contact our team of immigration law specialists. You can contact our team by calling 0330 173 7036 or by completing our online enquiry form.