right-to-work

---
name: right-to-work
description: Runs the UK Right to Work check on a new starter before their first shift, records it in the form that gives you a statutory excuse, and sets the follow-up and destruction dates.
---

# A new starter who is checked, filed and cleared before their first shift

You give me the person's name, the job, the date and time of their first shift, and whatever they have sent you to prove they can work here. I give you back one dated check record per starter, in the form the Home Office asks for, with the follow-up date and the destruction date already in it. If something is missing I tell you what to ask them for before they turn up.

## What it does

1. **Write down who is being checked, what they are being hired as, and the exact date and time of their first shift.** Take the name as it is spelled on their document, the job title, and whether this is an employee, someone on a worker's contract, an agency worker or an individual subcontractor. The Home Office is blunt about the deadline: "You must conduct a right to work check before you employ a person to ensure they are legally allowed to do the work in question" (Home Office, Employer's guide to right to work checks, 26 June 2025). If the first shift is tomorrow lunchtime, the check has to be finished this evening, so say so now rather than at the end.

2. **Pick the check route from the person's immigration status, never from their name, accent or appearance.** There are three routes: the Home Office online check using a share code, a manual check of original documents, or a digital identity check for British and Irish passport holders. The online route is not open to everyone: gov.uk states it is unavailable to British and Irish citizens. The discrimination code is explicit that an employer must not "make assumptions about an individual's right to work in the UK or their immigration status on the basis of their colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, accent, surname" (Home Office code of practice on avoiding unlawful discrimination), so ask every candidate the same question in the same words and record which route each one chose.

3. **For the online route, run the share code and date of birth through the employer's service and then match the face to the photo.** Go to the Home Office employer service, enter the nine-character share code and the person's date of birth, and read what comes back: the types of work they are allowed to do and how long they can work for, if there is a time limit. Share codes are valid for "90 calendar days from the point of issue" (Home Office, draft Employer's guide, 16 July 2026), so a code emailed to you two months ago may already be dead. You must then "check that the photograph on the online right to work check is of the individual presenting themselves for work", which "can be done in person or by video call", and you save the profile page as the evidence, not the share code.

4. **For the manual route, obtain the originals, check them with the person in front of you, then copy them.** The guide sets it out as obtain, check, copy: "You must obtain original documents from either List A or B", check that "photographs and dates of birth are consistent across documents", that "expiry dates for permission to be in the UK have not passed", and that "the documents are genuine, have not been tampered with and belong to the holder". List A gives a permanent excuse and List B a time-limited one. A British starter with no passport is not a problem: List A also accepts a UK birth or adoption certificate together with an official document showing their permanent National Insurance number, which for most kitchen and bar hires is a P45, P60 or an HMRC letter.

5. **For a British or Irish passport holder, you may use a digital identity provider instead, but you still have to do the looking yourself.** The Home Office guidance says it is "not currently mandatory for you to use a certified DVS", and that if you do not use a certified one it "recommends that employers only accept checks via a DVS that satisfy a minimum medium level of confidence". Whichever provider you use, you must still "satisfy yourself that the photograph and biographic details provided by the DVS following the check are consistent" with the person standing in front of you, and "retain a clear copy" of the check. Record the provider's name and whether it is certified, because that is the first thing an inspector asks.

6. **Record what the person is allowed to do, not just that they are allowed to work.** Write the hours cap, the type of work permitted, and the expiry date of the permission onto the record as three separate fields. A student visa is the one that catches hospitality out, because the hours cap applies in term time and lifts in the holidays, and the employer must "obtain, copy and retain details of their academic term and vacation times covering the duration of their period of study in the UK for which they will be employed". Do not write in a default number of hours. Copy the figure off the check result or the visa, and if it is not stated, put the record on hold and ask the person for the letter from their university.

7. **If they cannot produce anything acceptable, ask the Home Office rather than taking their word for it.** The Employer Checking Service exists for people whose status the online service and the document lists cannot show, including some outstanding applications and appeals. A Positive Verification Notice "will provide the employer with a statutory excuse for six months from the date specified in the Notice", so put the Notice in the file and put its date on the front. A verbal assurance, a solicitor's letter or a screenshot of an application confirmation is not a check and gives you no protection at all.

8. **Date-stamp the copy, lock it so it cannot be edited, and file it with a destruction date.** The guide requires you to "make a clear copy of each document in a format which cannot manually be altered" and to "retain a secure record of the date on which you made the check", done "by either making a dated declaration on the copy or by holding a separate record, securely, which can be shown to us upon request". Keep it "for the duration of the person's employment and for a further two years after they stop working for you. The file must then be securely destroyed." A photo on a manager's phone or a paper copy in the office drawer fails on both the format and the security test, so put it in the folder you would be willing to show an inspector.

9. **Set the follow-up date, then write the cover sheet with the money on it.** List A means no follow-up at all. For List B Group 1, "a follow-up check should take place on, or before, the date their permission comes to an end". For List B Group 2, the follow-up is due before the six months on the Positive Verification Notice run out. The cover sheet carries the starting penalties from the Home Office code of practice, "£45,000 (per worker)" for a first breach and "£60,000 (per worker)" for a repeat breach, and one line flagging that from 1 October 2026 the scheme extends beyond employees to worker's contracts, individual subcontractors and online matching arrangements, which is the change most likely to affect casual bar staff, agency cover and delivery riders.

## Then it checks

1. Every starter in the batch has one dated check record, and that date is on or before the date of their first shift.
2. Each record names the route used, and for a manual check names the exact document accepted and whether it was List A, List B Group 1 or List B Group 2.
3. Each online check record contains the Home Office profile page, plus a line saying who matched the photograph to the person and whether that was in person or by video call.
4. Every record carrying a time limit has a follow-up date filled in, and no follow-up date falls after the permission expiry date or later than six months from the date on a Positive Verification Notice.
5. Any record with an hours cap states the number of hours, and any student record has the term and vacation dates attached rather than a note saying to ask later.
6. Every record has a destruction date equal to the last working day plus two years, and no record gives a reason for checking that mentions a name, an accent, an appearance or a nationality.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never record a share code, an application reference or a photograph of a document as if it were the completed check. The evidence that gives you a statutory excuse is the Home Office profile page or the dated copy of the original document, and a file full of share codes looks like a done job while giving you no protection whatsoever, which is worse than an empty file that tells you honestly there is work to do.
- Never fill in an expiry date, an hours cap or a visa type that was not read off the check result or the document itself. A guessed hours cap is how a restaurant ends up rostering a student for forty hours in term time and loses the excuse it thought it had.
- Never smooth over a gap by writing "checked, all fine". Name the missing item and the person it belongs to, because a vague record cannot be repaired six months later when the person and the document have both gone.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor or immigration adviser to check before it is relied on. It is not legal advice and it does not decide anyone's immigration status or their right to work. The Home Office decides that, and a tribunal decides discrimination claims, where compensation has "no upper limit".

## Built from
- Home Office, "Employer's guide to right to work checks: 26 June 2025 (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-checks-employers-guide/employers-guide-to-right-to-work-checks-26-june-2025-accessible, published 16 May 2014 and last updated 11 September 2026: the obtain/check/copy sequence, the unalterable copy and dated record wording, the List A and List B excuse durations, the student term and vacation dates requirement, the DVS certification position, and the two year retention rule.
- Home Office, "Code of practice on preventing illegal working: Right to Work Scheme for employers, 13 February 2024 (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/illegal-working-penalties-codes-of-practice-for-employers/code-of-practice-on-preventing-illegal-working-right-to-work-scheme-for-employers-13-february-2024-accessible, in force 13 February 2024: the £45,000 first breach and £60,000 repeat breach starting penalties, the £5,000 reductions, the warning notice route and the 28 day objection window.
- Home Office, "Draft employer's guide to right to work checks: 16 July 2026 (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-checks-employers-guide/draft-employers-guide-to-right-to-work-checks-16-july-2026-accessible, in force 1 October 2026: the 90 calendar day share code validity and the extension of the scheme to worker's contracts, individual subcontractors and online matching arrangements under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
- Home Office, "Code of practice for employers: avoiding unlawful discrimination while preventing illegal working", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-checks-code-of-practice-on-avoiding-discrimination/code-of-practice-for-employers-avoiding-unlawful-discrimination-while-preventing-illegal-working-in-force-from-6-april-2022-accessible-version, in force 6 April 2022 with a draft dated October 2026, page updated 30 June 2026: the same-route-for-everyone rule, the ban on assumptions from colour, nationality, accent or surname, and the uncapped tribunal compensation.
- GOV.UK, "Checking a job applicant's right to work" and "View a job applicant's right to work details", https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work and https://www.gov.uk/view-right-to-work, no publication date shown on the pages, read 13 September 2026: that the online route is closed to British and Irish citizens, and that the employer service takes the share code plus date of birth and returns the types of work allowed and any time limit.
- uk-agents, "uk-legal-plugins" (employment-legal-uk hiring-review SKILL.md), https://github.com/uk-agents/uk-legal-plugins, 9 stars read from api.github.com, last pushed 31 May 2026: the habit of tagging the Right to Work item as a pre-hire legal obligation rather than an onboarding chore, and its instruction never to work from a superseded version of the Home Office code.

# right-to-work

## You are given

A folder from a UK hospitality business, one subfolder per starter, containing whatever the starter sent in: a share code in an email, a photograph or scan of a passport or a biometric residence permit, a birth certificate with a P45 or P60, a visa page, a university letter with term and vacation dates, a digital identity service provider's report, or a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service. Nothing is consistently named and some folders are incomplete.

Claude supplies `starters.md`: for each starter, the name exactly as spelled on the document, the job title, whether they are an employee, on a worker's contract, an agency worker or an individual subcontractor, the date and time of their first shift, the check route used, the name of the person who carried out the check, the date and time the check was carried out, whether the photograph match was done in person or by video call, and what that person read off the check result. You record what that person recorded. You never carry out, judge, complete or conclude a right to work check.

## Produce

Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `check-record-<starter-slug>.md`, one per starter, in the Home Office record order. Fixed fields: starter name as on the document, job title, engagement type, date and time of first shift, check route (`online share code`, `manual documents` or `digital identity service provider`), date the check was carried out, name of the person who carried it out, their signature line left blank, and for an online check the line naming who matched the photograph to the person and whether that was in person or by video call, or for a digital identity check the provider's name and whether it is certified. Then the three permission fields, each on its own line: `Type of work permitted`, `Hours cap`, `Permission expiry date`. Then `Excuse type` (`List A`, `List B Group 1`, `List B Group 2`, `Positive Verification Notice` or `not established`). Then `Follow-up date` and `Destruction date`. Then `Outcome recorded by the person who carried out the check:` followed by a blank signature and date block.
2. `evidence/<starter-slug>/` - the evidence copied in, one file per item, each named `<date of check>-<what it is>.<ext>`, written read-only so it cannot be edited in place, with a dated declaration file `declaration.md` beside it naming the item, the date the check was made and the person who made it. For an online check this is the Home Office profile page. For a manual check it is the copy of the original document. For a digital identity check it is the provider's report.
3. `check-register.csv` with columns in this order: `Starter`, `Job title`, `Engagement type`, `First shift date`, `Check date`, `Check carried out by`, `Route`, `Document or profile accepted`, `Excuse type`, `Type of work permitted`, `Hours cap`, `Permission expiry date`, `Follow-up date`, `Last working day`, `Destruction date`, `Complete` (`yes` or `missing items listed in chase-list`).
4. `follow-up-calendar.csv` with columns: `Starter`, `Excuse type`, `Trigger date`, `Follow-up due`, `Reason`. List A rows carry `no follow-up required`. List B Group 1 follow-up is on or before the permission expiry date. List B Group 2 follow-up is before the six months on the Positive Verification Notice run out, counted from the date specified in the Notice.
5. `chase-list.md` - one numbered line per missing item: the starter it belongs to, exactly what is missing, who to ask, and the date it is needed by, which is the date of their first shift. Name the item. Never write "checked, all fine" or "outstanding paperwork".
6. `cover-sheet.md` - one page for the front of the folder: the number of starters, how many records are complete, the starting penalties quoted exactly as SKILL.md quotes them from the Home Office code of practice, and one line flagging that from 1 October 2026 the scheme extends beyond employees to worker's contracts, individual subcontractors and online matching arrangements. Name the source and the date read under each quoted figure.
7. `timing-check.md` - for each starter, the check date against the first shift date, stated as a pass or a fail with the number of days or hours between them.

## Rules

- You never make, judge, conclude or record a right to work determination. You do not decide whether anyone may work, and you never write `has the right to work`, `cleared`, `passed`, `satisfactory`, `verified` or `compliant` anywhere. The `Outcome recorded by the person who carried out the check` block ships blank with a signature and date line for that person to complete. If `starters.md` does not name the person who carried out the check, the record is built with that field empty and the starter is listed in the return.
- Never fill in an expiry date, an hours cap, a visa type, a type of work permitted or a share code result that was not read off the check result or the document itself and recorded in `starters.md`. A field with no source reads `NOT READ OFF THE CHECK`, and never a default number.
- Never record a share code, an application reference, a solicitor's letter, a screenshot of an application confirmation or a verbal assurance as if it were the completed check. Where that is all that exists, the excuse type is `not established` and the item goes on the chase list.
- Where an hours cap exists, the term and vacation dates must be present in `evidence/`. If they are not, record the hours cap as read, set `Complete` to `missing items listed in chase-list`, and put the letter on the chase list. Never write a default term-time figure.
- Never record a reason for checking, and never write a name, an accent, an appearance, a nationality, a place of birth or a surname anywhere as a basis for the route chosen. The route comes from `starters.md` and nowhere else.
- Every record carries a destruction date equal to the last working day plus two years. Where the last working day is not known, write `last working day + 2 years, date to be set on leaving` rather than a guessed date.
- No follow-up date may fall after the permission expiry date, or later than six months from the date specified on a Positive Verification Notice. If one does, correct it to the earlier date and report it.
- Copy the evidence in a format that cannot be edited in place, and record the date of the check either as a dated declaration on the copy or in `declaration.md`. A photograph held on a phone and a loose paper copy are neither, and are listed on the chase list.
- Make no statement that a record gives a statutory excuse, and give no view on anyone's immigration status. This is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor or immigration adviser to check before it is relied on.
- Use British English, £ and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes.

## Return

A list of the files written with their absolute paths, the number of starters, how many records are complete and how many carry missing items, every starter whose check date falls on or after their first shift date, every field written as `NOT READ OFF THE CHECK`, every record with excuse type `not established`, every follow-up date that had to be corrected, and every starter with no named person recorded as having carried out the check.