Skip to content 
From 1 October 2026, the UK’s right to work regime expands significantly and adult social care is one of the sectors identified as most directly affected.
If your service uses agency workers, contractors, or any form of labour that sits outside a traditional employment contract, your compliance obligations are almost certainly wider than they were.
Most care providers have spent years managing right to work checks as a straightforward HR process. You check a document, keep a copy, move on. From the 1st day of October 2026, that approach may not be enough and the consequences of getting it wrong have become considerably more serious.
Here is what you need to know before you’re entirely out of time.
What Is Actually Changing on 1 October 2026
Until now, right to work obligations in the UK have applied to traditional employment relationships. If you employed someone directly, you were required to check and verify their right to work before they started. Contractors, subcontractors, and workers supplied through third-party arrangements were largely outside that obligation.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 changes that. From 1 October 2026, the illegal working regime extends well beyond the traditional employer and employee relationship.
The scope of who is covered now has expanded beyond what you think and we will be listing out the categories of those now included in the new right to work changes so you know which side of the law you are on.
Crucially, the way of conducting a right to work check has not changed. According to the updated Home Office Employer Guide, the process for verifying documents remains the same which is;
- Online checks for non-UK nationals
- Physical or third-party digital checks for British nationals.
What has changed is the universe of working arrangements that now require those checks to be carried out.
The other significant shift is extended liability. Under the new rules, responsibility for illegal working can travel up the contracting chain. In some cases, a care provider may face liability for a worker further down a subcontracting arrangement even where there is no direct contract between the provider and that individual.
The Home Office is, as one legal analysis put it, aligning the illegal working regime with the realities of modern labour markets.
Who Is Now in Scope Under the Right to Work Rules
For care providers, this expansion lands in a very specific and consequential way. The scope of who is covered now includes the category of people which the sector relies heavily on:
- Agency and bank staff to cover gaps in permanent rotas
- Self-employed personal assistants working directly with service users
- Contractors providing support services such as cleaning, catering, and maintenance
- Workers supplied through staffing platforms and online matching services
All of these arrangements now need to be assessed against the new framework.
As a care provider, I guess you’re already asking “do our directly employed staff have the right to work?” the primary question you should also be asking is “do we know the right to work status of everyone carrying out work in our service, regardless of how they are engaged?“
In light of this, there’s a need to clarify one important boundary. Genuinely self-employed individuals who provide services independently through their own businesses remain outside the scope of the new rules.
The difficulty (this is where legal advice may be needed), is that the line between genuine independent contracting and a working arrangement caught by the legislation is not always obvious. A worker who substitutes for others, operates through a labour platform, or works within a defined contracting chain is more likely to fall inside the new scope than a consultant billing directly for a specific professional service.
Social care is explicitly named by legal experts as one of the sectors most likely to be affected alongside construction, hospitality, and logistics, precisely because of how common it is to source labour through agencies, subcontractors, and flexible arrangements.
Here is the drafted subtopic — ready to slot between “Who Is Now in Scope” and “The Penalties for Getting It Wrong”:
How Right to Work Checks Must Be Conducted
With the upcoming right to work rule changes, there are 3 prescribed methods for conducting a right to work check. You must know which method applies to which worker.
❶ Manual document check
This applies primarily to British and Irish citizens who do not hold a valid passport or who are not eligible for an online check.
The process is three steps: obtain, check, copy:
- Obtain the original document in person. Scans, photographs, and photocopies are not acceptable substitutes.
- Check the document in the worker’s presence, confirming the person in front of you matches the document.
- Make a clear copy and record the date the check was carried out.
Acceptable documents are set out in the Home Office Employer Guide. The list has not significantly changed, but it is worth checking the current version before assuming last year’s process still applies in full.
❷ Home Office online check
This is now the standard method for most non-UK nationals, including those with eVisa status, pre-settled status, or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme.
The worker generates a share code through their UK Visas and Immigration account. The employer then accesses the Home Office Right to Work Checking Service using that share code and the worker’s date of birth.
Two points worth emphasising here because they catch care providers out regularly:
- A screenshot of the worker’s own eVisa or digital status is not a valid check. The employer must access the checking service directly.
- A screenshot of the worker’s own eVisa or digital status is not a valid check. The employer must access the checking service directly.
- Physical Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs) are no longer acceptable as a standalone right to work document.
❸ Digital Verification Service (DVS) check
From 1 October 2026, employers choosing the digital verification route for eligible British and Irish passport holders must use a provider that is formally registered as a Right to Work Digital Verification Service Provider (RtW DVSP).
From 1 October 2026, registered DVS providers can also verify qualifying British and Irish passports up to 6 months after expiry.
What must be retained
Regardless of which method you use, the evidence of the check must be retained for the duration of employment and for two years afterwards.
For online checks save a copy of the check result (including the worker’s photo and details) along with the date the check was conducted.
A check that cannot be evidenced is treated in law as a check that was never done.
Follow-up checks for time-limited permission
For any worker whose right to work is tied to a visa or time-limited immigration permission, a follow-up check must be completed before that permission expires.
If the permission lapses without a follow-up check being on file, the statutory excuse that protects the employer from civil penalties is lost even if the original check was conducted correctly.
For care providers sponsoring workers under a skilled worker visa, a missed follow-up check can trigger broader Home Office scrutiny of the entire sponsor licence, including recruitment processes, record-keeping, and how sponsored workers are being monitored day to day.
The Penalties for Getting It Wrong
The consequences of non-compliance under the new rules are not theoretical. They are specific, serious, and in some cases significantly higher than many providers realise.
The penalties for employing someone without the right to work, or failing to conduct compliant checks, include:
- Civil penalties of up to £60,000 per illegal worker
- Loss of sponsor licence
- Publication on the Home Office’s public list of non-compliant employers
- Criminal prosecution in the most serious cases, including where there is evidence that illegal working was knowingly facilitated
The extended liability provisions add a further layer of risk. If a worker further down a subcontracting chain is found to be working illegally, and your service is found to have had insufficient compliance protections in its contracts with the supplier above them, you may share in that liability even without direct knowledge of the situation.
The right to work changes place a new premium on documentation and contractual protections throughout the supply chain, not just at the point of direct employment.
What Care Providers Need to Do Right Now
The deadline is close. That does not mean nothing can be done before then and it certainly does not mean nothing should be done after it.
Here is the immediate action list every care provider should be working on:
- Map your workforce beyond direct employees:
Start by identifying every category of person carrying out work in or for your service who is not on a traditional employment contract.
Agency staff, bank workers, self-employed contractors, maintenance providers, cleaning contractors, kitchen staff supplied through a third party. Write it down.
Understand who they are and how they are engaged before you can assess whether the new rules apply to them.
- Review your existing contracts with agencies and labour suppliers
Your contracts with staffing agencies and labour suppliers need to include appropriate compliance warranties, provisions that require the supplier to confirm that right to work checks have been carried out correctly for every worker they place with you.
If your existing contracts do not include these, they need to be updated. Review template agreements specifically to include provisions covering subcontracting, substitution, and platform-based arrangements.
- Update your right to work policy and procedures
Your existing right to work policy may have been written for a simpler compliance landscape. From 1 October 2026, it needs to reflect the expanded scope of the regime.
Continuing to rely on existing policies after that date may itself expose your organisation to risk. Update the policy, brief your team and document that the update took place.
- Verify that records are complete and accessible
For every directly employed worker, check that right to work documents are on file, up to date, and stored correctly.
For non-UK nationals, confirm that online checks have been carried out through the Home Office Employer Checking Service and that records include the date the check was conducted.
A right to work check that cannot be evidenced is treated as no check at all.
- Seek legal advice on ambiguous arrangements
If you have arrangements that sit in grey territory, it could be a self-employed personal assistant who also works through a platform, a cleaning contractor who substitutes workers regularly, a staffing arrangement that has evolved informally over time, what you need to do is to get specific advice before assuming those arrangements fall outside the new scope.
The cost of a legal review is considerably lower than the cost of a £60,000 penalty.
- Read the updated Home Office guidance
The Home Office published an updated Employer Guide on 16 July 2026 specifically to help employers understand and comply with the new requirements. It is the authoritative source.
Read it, or assign someone to read it and brief your team on the relevant sections for your service type.
The right to work changes coming into force on 1 October 2026 are not targeted specifically at care but the way care services are staffed means the sector is more exposed than most.
The combination of agency reliance, international recruitment, and flexible labour arrangements puts adult social care squarely in the Home Office’s line of sight under the new framework.
The good news is that the compliance steps are manageable. The bad news is that they cannot wait.
If you have specific questions about how these changes affect your service, the Home Office Employer Guide and your employment law adviser are your best starting points.
Subscribe to our socials to stay up-to-date with the care sector.
