Right-to-work checks widen beyond employment contracts

The Home Office is extending right-to-work compliance beyond conventional employment relationships, widening immigration-check obligations across parts of the labour market that have previously sat outside the core employee model.

From 1 October 2026, the right-to-work scheme will apply more broadly to working arrangements used across the gig economy, flexible labour, subcontracting, and other non-standard routes. Government consultation material has identified sectors including construction, food delivery, beauty salons, courier services, and warehousing as areas where the expanded regime is expected to have particular relevance.

The current system has long focused on people employed under traditional contracts of employment. The new framework is designed to close gaps where individuals perform work through worker contracts, individual subcontracting, platform arrangements, agency labour, casual labour, or more complex labour chains.

The government consultation response said 340 responses had shaped updated guidance and statutory codes of practice. It also said the right-to-work scheme would continue to adapt to a “more digital, flexible labour market”, with digital identity services and further improvements to checking processes expected to form part of the system.

The change does not convert contractors, platform workers, or other non-employee workers into employees for employment law purposes. Its effect is more targeted: companies using those labour models may fall within right-to-work duties and civil-penalty exposure under illegal-working rules.

Legal advisers have warned that the change will push immigration compliance further beyond HR. DLA Piper said the measures would apply illegal-working provisions to arrangements outside typical employment contracts and could bring non-employees engaged under a worker’s contract, individual contractors, agency workers, gig-economy workers, platform service providers, substitutes, casual workers, temporary workers, and zero hours workers within scope.

The heaviest operational strain is likely to fall on companies that rely on several labour routes at once. A warehouse operator, courier platform, construction contractor, beauty chain, event business, or food delivery intermediary may have direct employees, agency workers, self-employed individuals, subcontracted labour, and platform workers operating in the same commercial environment.

When those arrangements are managed by different functions, compliance can fragment. HR may handle direct employees, procurement may hold supplier relationships, operations may control rotas, site managers may engage casual labour, and finance may process payments without full visibility over immigration-status checks.

The governance problem is practical rather than theoretical. Right-to-work checks have usually been tied to onboarding and payroll, but the wider regime will require a clearer map of who is performing work, under what arrangement, through which contractual route, and who is responsible for completing and recording the required checks.

The change sits alongside zero hours reforms now moving through consultation, which are also pushing variable labour towards greater predictability, stronger enforcement, and closer scrutiny. Flexible labour remains commercially attractive, but it is becoming more documented and more heavily governed.

The consultation response also shows how uneven current checking processes remain. Respondents reported widely varying right-to-work check volumes, while the government noted that manual document checks are still common and adoption of digital verification service providers remains mixed. Reported digital verification costs ranged from 72p to £41.36 per worker, with a median of £5.

The cost per check may look modest in isolation, although the wider operational burden is likely to be more substantial. High-volume employers may need to redesign onboarding workflows, update supplier contracts, revisit indemnity clauses, centralise worker data, train local managers, and test whether current systems can handle people who are not listed on standard employee records.

Supply chain exposure will be particularly difficult to manage. Companies that rely on contractors or intermediaries to provide labour into their operations may no longer be able to rely on contractual assurances alone. Audit rights, evidence trails, escalation routes, and clearer responsibility for checks will become more important where worker status or labour-source arrangements are complex.

There is also a digital-identity dimension. The government wants the system to be streamlined and accessible, but wider use of digital checking tools raises questions around data protection, record retention, fraud detection, and affordability for smaller companies. Larger employers may standardise faster, while smaller suppliers could face new compliance expectations without the same administrative capacity.

Companies already managing wage pressure, recruitment shortages, employment-law reform, and contractor-status uncertainty now have another operational milestone approaching. The most exposed businesses are those that have treated right-to-work checks as a narrow employee-onboarding task rather than a labour governance control.

The coming months will test whether HR, procurement, operations, legal, compliance, and site management can work from one reliable view of the workforce. The right-to-work regime is adapting to the labour market it regulates, and the boundary between employment compliance and supply chain governance is becoming harder to maintain.