UK employers: if someone on your staff has time-limited permission to work in the UK, their right to work check is not a one-off. The Home Office expects you to check again on or before the date their permission ends if you want to keep employing them. The safest way to make sure that happens is to diarise the follow-up the same day you finish the first check.
Who needs a follow-up check
The Home Office employer's guide (updated 1 October 2026) says employers need to re-check people with time-limited permission if they intend to keep employing them after that permission expires, and must do so on or before the date it comes to an end. The follow-up does not have to use the same type of check as the first one.
No follow-up is required where the first check confirmed settled status, or status under the EU Settlement Scheme. For British and Irish citizens, one correct check covers the whole employment.
Which date goes in the diary
- Permission with an expiry date (List B Group 1 documents, or an online check showing time-limited permission): the follow-up is due on or before that expiry date.
- A Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service: the statutory excuse lasts six months from the date of the notice, and the follow-up must happen before those six months run out.
Do not put the deadline itself in the diary. Put a reminder several weeks before it, so you have time to ask for an updated share code or document. Then add a second entry for the deadline.
What to record the day you do the first check
- The person's name and the date of the check.
- How you checked: Home Office online check, a digital verification service provider, or the manual document check.
- The date their permission ends, or the date of the Positive Verification Notice.
- The follow-up due date, and the reminder date in front of it.
- Who is responsible for running the follow-up.
Keep the copy of the check, or the saved online check result, for the whole employment and for two years after it ends, as the guidance requires. Repeat the same steps and keep the same evidence for the follow-up check.
If they can't prove their right to work on the day
That does not always mean they have lost it. They may have applied to extend their permission before it ran out, and the application may still be under consideration. If you are reasonably satisfied that they have an outstanding application, appeal or administrative review, your statutory excuse continues for up to 28 calendar days from the expiry date. In that time you can get a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service or carry out an online check. Keep a copy of whatever satisfied you, such as a Home Office acknowledgement letter or reference number.
The grace period ends early if the Employer Checking Service issues a Negative Verification Notice. If a follow-up check confirms that someone no longer has the right to work, you lose the statutory excuse if you continue to employ them.
A tracker that actually gets checked
One row per person is enough: name, check date, permission end date, follow-up due date, reminder date, follow-up completed (yes/no), completion date and the new end date if there is one. Review it on a fixed cycle, for example on the first working day of every month, so nothing slips past its date unnoticed.
The guide
The Complete UK Right to Work Checks Blueprint has a chapter on follow-up checks and expiring permission and a ready-to-use Follow-Up Check Tracker. It also includes the Right-to-Work Check Log and an evidence pack checklist. Instant PDF. Also available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback, where editions and included extras may differ.
Sources: GOV.UK: Right to work checks: an employer's guide (section 4, “When are follow-up checks required?”); GOV.UK: Check a job applicant's right to work.
Official guidance checked 1 November 2026. General information, not legal advice.
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