An employer can sponsor a worker’s visa and still fail to carry out a compliant right to work check.
The two processes are connected, but they are not the same.
Sponsorship establishes the employer’s role in supporting a particular immigration application. A right to work check establishes whether the person has permission to undertake the employment when the employer is actually proposing to employ them.
That distinction matters because circumstances can change between the Certificate of Sponsorship being assigned and the employee’s first day.
The worker may receive different immigration permission from what the employer expected.
Their start date may move.
Their immigration application may still be pending.
Their permission may contain restrictions.
Or the employer may simply assume that because it sponsored the application, nothing further needs to be checked.
For a licensed sponsor, that assumption creates two separate risks.
The organisation has sponsor duties requiring it to check and retain evidence of a sponsored worker’s right to work.
Where it is also the employer, carrying out the prescribed check can establish the statutory excuse against liability for a civil penalty if the individual is later found to be working illegally.
A careful sponsor therefore treats the right to work check as a final employment control, not as an administrative duplicate of the visa application.
Sponsorship does not prove the right to work
A Certificate of Sponsorship is issued before the worker receives immigration permission.
It records the job the employer intends to offer and forms part of the worker’s immigration application.
It is not evidence that the worker’s application has succeeded.
Nor is a visa approval email, by itself, the employer’s prescribed right to work check.
The employer still needs to establish that the person presenting for work has the right to work in the UK and is permitted to undertake the work being offered.
For most sponsored workers with digital immigration status, this will ordinarily be done using the Home Office online right to work service and a share code provided by the worker.
The result should then be checked against the person who is actually being employed.
That may sound procedural.
The underlying principle is more important.
The employer should know, before work begins, what permission the employee actually holds.
“The fact that we prepared the sponsorship does not make the right to work check redundant. Sponsorship tells us what we asked the Home Office to grant. The right to work check tells the employer what permission the person actually has when they are about to start work. I would want both parts of that record.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
Sponsor duty and statutory excuse are related but different
This distinction is useful when thinking about compliance.
Appendix D of the sponsor guidance requires sponsors to retain evidence that right to work checks have been completed for workers they sponsor.
That duty can apply even where the sponsor is not the worker’s direct employer.
Separately, the UK’s illegal working legislation allows an employer to establish a statutory excuse against a civil penalty by carrying out the prescribed right to work check correctly.
For an ordinary Skilled Worker employed directly by the sponsoring company, both obligations point in the same direction.
The sponsor is the employer.
It needs the check for sponsor compliance and for the statutory excuse.
But more complicated sponsorship arrangements can expose the difference.
A sponsor may, where the immigration rules permit it, sponsor someone employed by a related organisation.
Or a sponsored worker may be engaged under another permitted arrangement.
In those cases, the organisation responsible for the statutory excuse and the organisation carrying the sponsor duty may not always be identical.
The sponsor guidance therefore expressly requires the sponsor to retain evidence of an appropriate check even where another permitted employing organisation conducted it.
This is a good example of why sponsor compliance should not be reduced to ordinary HR compliance.
Sometimes the obligations overlap.
Sometimes they do not.
The check needs to happen before work begins
For a new sponsored employee, the right to work check should be completed before employment starts.
This is not something to correct during the first payroll run.
The employer should know that the person is permitted to undertake the work before allowing them to begin.
For most sponsored workers this is relatively straightforward.
Their immigration application has been granted.
Their digital status is available.
They generate the appropriate right to work share code.
The employer checks the Home Office service and retains the required evidence.
The risk usually arises where recruitment pressure begins to influence the sequence.
A project is already delayed.
The employee has arrived in the UK.
Their manager wants them to start.
Someone has seen the visa approval email.
HR plans to complete the online check later in the week.
That order should be resisted.
The right to work check belongs before commencement.
Use the right Home Office service
Digital immigration status has made it easier to prove the right to work, but it has also created several Home Office screens that can look similar.
For an online right to work check, the employer should use the Home Office service specifically designed to check a job applicant’s right to work using their share code.
Viewing the employee’s own UKVI account is not the same thing.
Nor is asking the worker to send a screenshot of their eVisa.
The prescribed employer service gives the organisation the information it needs to assess the work permission and retain evidence of the check.
This matters because the statutory excuse depends on carrying out the check in the prescribed way.
An employer can know perfectly well that somebody has immigration permission while still failing to create the legal protection that comes from a properly conducted check.
The photograph matters
The online result is not simply a statement about immigration status.
The employer must satisfy itself that the person shown in the Home Office result is the person presenting for employment.
That means checking the photograph.
Again, the reason is straightforward.
Immigration permission belongs to an individual.
The employer needs to know that the person relying on it is that individual.
In most cases this will be unremarkable.
The employee is known to the business, appears at onboarding and clearly matches the online record.
But identity should not disappear from the process merely because the status is digital.
Check the work permitted, not only the expiry date
A right to work result can contain conditions.
The employer should therefore look at what the individual is permitted to do.
For a Skilled Worker, that usually means employment connected with the sponsored role, subject to the conditions of that immigration route.
Other immigration categories can have different restrictions.
Students may have restrictions on hours.
Some individuals may have broader permission to work.
Others may have conditions affecting the type of work they can undertake.
The employer’s task is not simply to find the word “valid”.
It is to establish that the permission covers this employment.
That becomes particularly important where the organisation employs people under several different immigration categories.
The eVisa is now central to sponsored worker checks
The UK immigration system has moved substantially to digital status.
Successful sponsored workers will now generally have an eVisa linked to their UKVI account.
From 1 July 2026, the Home Office also stopped routinely issuing entry clearance vignettes to new successful entry clearance applicants, subject to limited arrangements for people who cannot use the normal digital identity process.
For employers, that makes the online right to work check the normal route for many sponsored workers.
It also means old internal procedures based around photocopying a Biometric Residence Permit or checking a visa sticker should be reviewed.
An expired physical BRP is not something an employer should continue treating as current evidence of the person’s right to work simply because that is how checks were completed several years ago.
The underlying immigration status may continue.
The way the employer evidences it has changed.
The right to work check does not replace the sponsor’s entry-date evidence
This is another distinction worth preserving.
For certain sponsored workers who applied for entry clearance from overseas, Appendix D can require the sponsor to establish and retain appropriate evidence of when the worker entered the UK.
That is a sponsor record-keeping question.
It is separate from the prescribed right to work check.
A worker may successfully prove their current right to work online while the sponsor still needs to retain appropriate evidence of their date of entry for sponsor compliance purposes.
The increasing use of eVisas has made this distinction more visible because there may no longer be a vignette and entry stamp showing the entire sequence conveniently in one passport.
Where necessary, travel evidence or other permitted information may need to be retained.
A careful file therefore answers two questions separately.
Can this person work?
When did they enter the UK under the relevant arrangements?
Can a sponsored employee start before the date on the CoS?
Potentially, yes.
Once the worker’s immigration permission has been granted and is valid, the sponsor guidance allows a sponsored worker in relevant circumstances to begin the sponsored employment before the start date recorded on the Certificate of Sponsorship.
The employer still needs to complete the correct right to work check before work starts.
That illustrates why the CoS start date should not be treated as the sole right to work control.
The actual immigration permission matters.
If the person is permitted to start, the prescribed check should evidence that.
If the permission is not yet valid, an employment start date in the company’s HR system cannot make it valid.
Time-limited permission needs a future control
Most sponsored workers have time-limited immigration permission.
A correctly conducted initial check therefore does not always close the right to work issue for the whole employment.
Where permission is time limited, the employer will usually need a follow-up check if it intends to continue employing the person after that permission expires.
The check should be carried out on or before the expiry of the existing permission.
This is one of the points where right to work compliance and sponsor management should meet.
The organisation should already know when sponsored workers’ permission is due to expire.
If the employee needs an extension, settlement application or another immigration route, that discussion should begin early enough for the employer to understand what happens next.
The right to work diary should not produce a surprise two days before expiry.
An expiring visa does not necessarily mean the right to work ends that day
This is where employers can become unnecessarily anxious.
Suppose a Skilled Worker has made a valid, in-time application to extend their permission before their existing leave expires.
Their physical or digital status may continue to show the previous expiry date while the new application is under consideration.
That does not automatically mean they must stop working the following morning.
Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 can extend existing immigration permission while a qualifying in-time application remains pending.
Where the employee cannot demonstrate continuing right to work through the normal online process, the Employer Checking Service may be relevant.
The employer should establish the immigration position rather than assume either that the employee must be dismissed or that employment can simply continue indefinitely without further verification.
The Employer Checking Service has a particular role
The Employer Checking Service, commonly referred to as the ECS, allows the Home Office to verify a person’s right to work in specified circumstances where the normal online or document route cannot provide the necessary evidence.
That can include situations where the employee has:
- an outstanding immigration application
- an outstanding appeal or administrative review
- certain application documents requiring Home Office verification
- technical difficulty accessing digital status or generating a share code
A Positive Verification Notice from the ECS can establish a time-limited statutory excuse for the period stated.
It is not a general alternative to the normal right to work service simply because the employer finds the online process inconvenient.
The correct route should follow the employee’s circumstances.
Give the employee a reasonable opportunity to establish continuing permission
A digital problem is not evidence of illegal working.
Nor is the absence of a new decision on the day an old visa expires.
An employer should distinguish between:
the employee does not have permission, and
the employee cannot presently demonstrate the permission through the ordinary route.
Those are not necessarily the same problem.
The Home Office employer guidance recognises this and advises employers to give an individual a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate continuing right to work.
That may involve use of the Employer Checking Service.
This is an area where rushed HR decisions can create an employment problem alongside the immigration issue.
The correct immigration position should be established first.
Do not rely on the employee’s own screenshot
A worker may send HR a screenshot showing their immigration status.
That can be useful for explaining what they believe their position to be.
It is not a substitute for the employer carrying out the prescribed check where the online right to work service is required.
The same applies to:
a forwarded Home Office email,
a PDF of the visa decision,
a screenshot from the worker’s UKVI account,
or the employee showing HR their status on a mobile phone.
Those documents may be relevant background.
They are not necessarily the prescribed evidence needed to establish the employer’s statutory excuse.
This distinction is easy to overlook because all of the material comes from the Home Office in some form.
The legal process nevertheless matters.
Record the check so it can be understood later
A good right to work record should make the position obvious to somebody reviewing the file later.
Who was checked?
When?
What did the check show?
Was the right to work continuous or time limited?
If time limited, when does the relevant permission end?
What follow-up has been diarised?
A business should not need to reconstruct this from someone’s inbox three years later.
This is particularly important for sponsored workers because UKVI can examine right to work evidence during sponsor compliance activity.
The organisation should be able to produce the record without first having to remember which HR employee carried out the original check.
Right to work and sponsorship expiry should not be tracked separately
A mature sponsor should avoid having one system for immigration expiry and another entirely separate system for right to work follow-up.
The dates are connected.
If a sponsored worker’s immigration permission expires on 15 February, somebody should already know:
whether continued employment is intended,
whether further sponsorship is required,
whether a new immigration application has been made,
and what right to work evidence will be needed around expiry.
The objective is not simply to create another calendar reminder.
It is to manage the employee’s immigration position coherently.
“A follow-up check should rarely be the first moment the business notices a Skilled Worker’s permission is expiring. By then we should already know whether the employment is continuing and what immigration application is being made. Right to work control works best when it sits inside the sponsorship timetable, not alongside it.”
Abdul Jabbar, Principal Immigration Adviser
A sponsor should still check workers it sponsors but does not directly employ
This is a more specialist point, but an important one.
Sponsor guidance permits certain arrangements where the sponsored worker is not employed directly by the sponsor.
Where that is permitted, the sponsor’s right to work duty does not disappear.
Appendix D requires sponsors to retain evidence of an appropriate right to work check for any worker they sponsor, whether or not they are the direct employer.
If a related organisation employs the worker, that organisation may carry out the check for its own statutory excuse.
The sponsor can then obtain and retain the evidence.
Alternatively, the sponsor may conduct its own check.
The important point is that sponsorship brings its own record-keeping obligation.
The business should not assume that because another group company operates payroll, immigration verification can be left entirely outside the sponsor’s control.
Self-employed sponsored arrangements create the same distinction
Some sponsored routes permit self-employed working arrangements.
Where that is lawful, the sponsor may not need a statutory excuse in the same way as an ordinary employer under the current illegal working framework.
But Appendix D still requires the sponsor to establish that the worker has the legal right to undertake the sponsored work and retain evidence of the check.
This is precisely why sponsor duty and illegal working liability should not be treated as interchangeable concepts.
The sponsor obligation can be broader.
Right to work checks after TUPE transfers
TUPE creates another overlap between employment law and immigration compliance.
Where employees transfer from one employer to another under a relevant TUPE transfer, the incoming employer can benefit from a statutory excuse established by a compliant right to work check completed by the outgoing employer.
But there is an obvious risk.
If the outgoing employer’s check was defective, the incoming employer may inherit a problem it did not create.
For that reason, Home Office guidance advises the incoming employer to conduct fresh checks.
Under the current rules, there is a 60-calendar-day grace period from the date of the relevant transfer in which those fresh checks can be completed.
That is separate from the much shorter sponsor licence reporting and application deadlines that can arise when sponsored workers transfer under TUPE.
The two regimes should not be confused.
Right to work does not answer every sponsorship question
A worker can have the right to work and the sponsor can still be non-compliant.
Imagine a Skilled Worker whose online check confirms valid immigration permission.
The business has nevertheless reduced their salary below what their sponsorship permits.
Or the employee has moved into a substantially different job.
The right to work result does not retrospectively approve those employment changes.
Sponsor compliance still needs to be considered.
This is another reason the right to work check should not become the organisation’s only immigration control.
It tells the employer whether the individual is permitted to work.
It does not necessarily tell the sponsor that every aspect of the current employment remains consistent with the sponsorship requirements.
Nor should the sponsor assume immigration permission guarantees the job is lawful
The reverse is also true.
The worker may hold valid immigration permission, but the employer still has to comply with:
the sponsor duties,
employment law,
minimum wage requirements,
professional registration where required,
and other regulation applying to the job.
Immigration permission is one part of lawful employment.
It is not a general certificate of compliance.
Discrimination remains a separate risk
Right to work checking should be applied fairly.
The fact that one applicant appears British and another does not is not a lawful basis for checking only one of them.
Employers should have a consistent recruitment and onboarding process that establishes right to work without making assumptions based on nationality, ethnicity, accent or appearance.
Likewise, an employee who has a pending immigration application should not automatically be treated as having lost the right to work where the law provides for permission to continue.
Sponsor compliance does not require aggressive decision-making.
It requires accurate decision-making.
A change is coming on 1 October 2026
There is one current development employers should be aware of.
The Home Office published updated draft right to work guidance on 11 September 2026, due to take effect on 1 October 2026.
The forthcoming regime broadens aspects of right to work civil penalty liability beyond traditional contracts of employment to additional working arrangements, including certain worker contracts, individual subcontracting arrangements and online matching services. It also introduces extended-liability concepts for some contractual chains.
For sponsor licence holders, the immediate sponsor duty remains broader in an important respect: Appendix D already requires a sponsor to check any worker it sponsors, whether or not that person is its direct employee.
Organisations using non-standard labour models should therefore review the October changes separately.
This article describes the right to work regime in force on 14 September 2026. It should be reviewed when the new rules take effect on 1 October.
What would we review in a sponsor’s right to work system?
The useful questions are not complicated.
Are checks completed before employment begins?
Is the correct Home Office service being used?
Can the business show that the person checked was the person employed?
Does the check permit the work being undertaken?
Is the evidence retained?
Are time-limited permissions diarised?
Does the business know what happens where an application remains pending at expiry?
Does HR know when the Employer Checking Service should be considered?
Are sponsored-worker immigration dates integrated with the sponsorship process?
And, where sponsored workers sit in group companies or other permitted arrangements, does the licensed sponsor itself retain the evidence Appendix D requires?
Those questions reveal much more than a policy stating:
“Right to work checks are completed for all employees.”
Frequently asked questions
Does a sponsored worker still need a right to work check?
Yes.
A sponsor must retain evidence that an appropriate right to work check has been completed for workers it sponsors.
Where the sponsor is also the employer, the prescribed check is also relevant to establishing the statutory excuse against a civil penalty for illegal working.
Is the Certificate of Sponsorship proof of the right to work?
No.
A Certificate of Sponsorship supports the worker’s immigration application. It does not itself give the individual permission to work.
Is a Skilled Worker visa approval email enough?
The employer should carry out the prescribed right to work check.
For most sponsored workers with an eVisa, this will ordinarily be through the Home Office online right to work checking service using the worker’s right to work share code.
Can I accept a screenshot of an eVisa?
A screenshot supplied by the worker is not a substitute for carrying out the prescribed employer online check where that service applies.
When should the right to work check be carried out?
It should be completed before the employee starts work.
Do sponsored workers need follow-up checks?
Where the individual has time-limited permission and employment will continue beyond that permission, a follow-up check will normally be required on or before expiry.
What if the employee has applied to extend their visa but has not received a decision?
Their right to work may continue, including where section 3C applies following a valid in-time application.
Depending on the circumstances, the online checking service or Employer Checking Service may be used to establish continuing permission.
What is the Employer Checking Service?
It is a Home Office service that allows employers to seek verification of a person’s right to work in specified situations where the normal online or documentary evidence is not available or sufficient.
Do right to work checks have to be retained?
Yes.
The employer should retain the prescribed evidence of the check.
Sponsor licence holders also have separate Appendix D record-keeping duties.
Does a sponsor need to check someone it sponsors but does not employ directly?
Yes.
Current Appendix D requires the sponsor to retain evidence of a right to work check for any worker it sponsors, whether or not the sponsor itself is the direct employer.
Do TUPE employees need fresh checks?
The incoming employer can inherit the benefit of a properly established statutory excuse, but Home Office guidance advises fresh checks because the buyer may otherwise inherit the risk of an inadequate original check.
A 60-calendar-day grace period currently applies to fresh checks following a relevant TUPE transfer.
The right to work check is the final confirmation, not the immigration strategy
For a sponsor, the right to work check should usually be uneventful.
The worker has been sponsored correctly.
Their immigration application has been decided.
The employer completes the prescribed check.
The result confirms that the person has permission to undertake the work.
The evidence is retained.
What makes the check important is precisely that it sits at the end of the process.
It confirms the position on which the employer is about to rely.
That is different from the sponsorship assessment, which begins earlier and asks whether the organisation, job and worker can properly use the immigration route.
A careful employer needs both.
The Certificate of Sponsorship should reflect the employment the business intends to offer.
The right to work check should confirm the immigration permission the worker actually holds.
When those two things align, employment can begin on a considerably firmer footing.
When they do not, the right response is to understand the difference before allowing urgency to make the decision.
Reviewing your right to work processes?
If your organisation sponsors workers and there is a particular concern about right to work checks, follow-up checks, pending applications or historic records, you can request a Free Case Assessment.
Tell us about the worker or compliance issue involved.
We can then consider whether Knightsbridge Immigration can assist.
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