G4I can help your organisation in combating illegal employment. It can be very confusing to know whether you can hire a person and whether their employment is still legal.

At G4I we address two core areas of potential illegal employment from initial engagement to workers overstaying on their visa.

We also address workers visas that permits work as employed or self-employed. G4I offers a free verification service to help you from hiring a person illegally which could mean the Home Office imposing a civil penalty of £20,000 per illegal worker and possible a prison sentence. 

In most instances organisations can prevent illegal employment by putting in place good due diligence procedures and having the right tools to track compliance data.

The information on this page is a guideline. Unless you specialise in compliance and preventing illegal employment, we strongly recommend you get impartial advice as to whether your organisation is complying with the Home Office 5 key areas of good HR practices.

How to check a worker's right to work?

You must check that the person is allowed to work for you in the UK before you employ them. Before engagement you should do these checks:

• See the worker’s original documents.
• Check that the documents are valid with the worker present.
• Take copies of the original documents and record the date you made the check, print name and sign each document.

Note: You could face a civil penalty if you employ an illegal worker and you have not carried out a correct right to work check. The civil penalty could be £20,000 per illegal worker.

Important Notice : You must not discriminate against anyone because of their race .

Before you even consider employing someone, you need to check that:

• the documents are originals and belong to the person who has given them to you.
• the dates for the worker’s right to work in the UK have not expired.
• photos are the same across all documents and look like the applicant.
• date of birth are the same across all documents.
• the person has permission to do the type of work you are offering including any limit on the number of hours they can work.
• for students you must see evidence of their study and vacation times and you must verify this directly with the training institute. Also check to see if the training institute still has a valid licence.
• if 2 documents give different names, the person has supporting documents showing why they are different, e.g. marriage certificate or divorce decree.

Read the guidance on preventing illegal working in the UK for the lists of acceptable documents and how to conduct right to work checks.

Note: Further checks - you don’t have to do further checks if the person doesn’t have restrictions on their right to work in the UK.

You will have to make additional checks on your workers if they have a limited right to work in the UK. This means track when their visas will expire and do not permit employment after the visa has expired if you do not have the following evidence:

• New visa application was submitted before their current visa has expired. If the visa application was submitted after the visa expired that worker cannot work until either their new visa has been approved or the Home Office states otherwise.
• You have seen the new visa before the current one had expired.

Note: If the visa has expired and the worker provides you original evidence of royal mail or courier receipt then this would suffice. I would still ask the worker to provide evidence that the Home Office fee was deducted from their account if applicable and if the Home Office sends out confirmation letter of receipt, request to see the original copy and place a copy on file.

It is very important to take copies of all original evidence and file. You could be audited by the likes of the Home Office, HMRC or even other regulating bodies. You may have to call upon these documents if you attend an employment tribunal. 

When you copy the documents, you should:

• Write your full name, date seen original evidence, state you copied the original, your job position and then,
• take a photocopy or scan the document and file;
• for passports, copy any page with the expiry date, applicant’s details (e.g. nationality, date of birth and photograph) including endorsements, e.g. a work visa or Certificate of Entitlement to the right of abode in the UK;
• for biometric residence permits, copy both sides of the card;
• for all other documents you must make a complete copy;
• keep copies during the worker’s employment and if they leave your employment, keep the file for 1 year.

Make sure you follow the  data protection law when holding onto 'personal data'.

The law states you should not employ a person until a right to work check has been made, but what if the person you are interviewing forgot to bring his/her documents to the interview or they have no documents to prove their right to work, what do you do?

If they have documents, but not on them and you want to offer them a job, you can say, we want to hire you but we cannot do this until you demonstrate your right to work status.

If they have no evidence at all, you must use the Home Office’s Employer Checking Service to see if an applicant has the right to work if:

• they cannot show you their documents (e.g. they have an outstanding appeal or application with the Home Office) or
• they have an Application Registration Card or a Certificate of Application.

To request a check, download and fill in the employer checking service enquiry form and email it to the Employer Checking Service. You can email the Home Office via  employercheckingservice@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk .

You can contact any regulated law firm like ours and we can check the persons documents to see if they can work or need a new visa.

You can contact the Sponsorship, Employer and Education helpline by emailing them on BusinessHelpdesk@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk or, call them on 0300 123 4699 any time between Monday to Thursday, 9 am to 5 pm and Friday, 9 am to 4.30 pm.

If you do not feel comfortable discussing this with the Home Office you can contact G4I instead who will ensure any conversations regarding your workforce is strictly confidential. If G4I finds any non-compliance we will simply guide you as to what to do and if requested recommend procedures to follow. Our aim is not to change the way you do things, but to guide you on how to avert future immigration issues.

To learn more about preventing illegal employment, you can check out the Home Office guidance document .