Right-to-work record retention in the United Kingdom
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Employers must keep copies of right-to-work documents for the duration of an employee's employment and for at least two years after they leave. Retaining those records correctly is what preserves a statutory excuse against a civil penalty if the Home Office later finds you employed someone without permission to work.
What a statutory excuse means and why it matters
If a worker is found to have no right to work in the UK, the Home Office can issue a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker. A statutory excuse removes or reduces that liability — but only if you conducted the check correctly and kept the evidence.
There are two routes to a statutory excuse: a manual document check or a check via a certified Identity Service Provider (IDSP) for British and Irish citizens with a valid passport, or an online check using the Home Office's Employer Checking Service or the online right-to-work checking service for workers with a Biometric Residence Permit, eVisa or other digital status. Whichever route you use, the record-keeping rules apply.
What documents you must copy and store
For a manual check, you must make a clear, legible copy of every document the worker presents from the acceptable documents list. Specific requirements depend on which list the document falls under:
- List A documents establish a permanent right to work. One check before employment starts is sufficient, and the copy must be retained throughout employment and for two years afterwards.
- List B documents establish a time-limited right to work. You must carry out a follow-up check before the expiry date shown on the document (or within a specified period as set by the Home Office guidance), and each copy must be retained on the same two-year-after-leaving basis.
For online checks, you must retain a clear copy or screenshot of the Home Office share code result page, including the worker's photograph and the date you conducted the check. A printed or saved digital record both satisfy the requirement.
For IDSP checks, you must retain the Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT) check result provided by the IDSP, again including the photograph and the date.
How long to keep records and in what format
The retention period is the same regardless of the check type: keep the copy for the duration of employment plus two years from the date employment ends. That end date is the day the person leaves your organisation, not the date their contract was issued or any notice period started.
Records can be stored digitally or in hard copy. If you store them digitally, you must be able to retrieve and produce them promptly if the Home Office requests them. Password-protecting a folder or storing records in a payroll system is acceptable, provided you can access them quickly. Encryption is good practice but there is no statutory format requirement beyond legibility and retrievability.
Under UK GDPR, right-to-work records are personal data. You should not retain them beyond the two-year minimum without a clear justification, and you should have a written data retention policy that covers them. Storing documents indefinitely because it feels safer is not compliant with the UK GDPR principle of storage limitation.
Repeat and follow-up checks
Follow-up checks for List B workers are not optional. If a worker's leave to remain or visa is expiring, you must conduct a fresh check and copy the new document before the previous permission expires. Failing to do so means you lose the statutory excuse from the point the original permission ran out, even if the worker has in fact obtained an extension.
The Home Office's online checking service will sometimes return a "pending" result if a worker has applied to extend their leave before it expired. In that case, you should request a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service, which itself forms part of your records and grants a statutory excuse for a further six months.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 and wider compliance context
The Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens a range of day-one employment rights, which increases the importance of getting pre-employment compliance right from the start. A right-to-work check must be completed before the employee's first day of work — not during their first week or after a trial shift. Conducting the check on day one rather than before it technically means you have already employed the person without a completed check.
Keeping a dated record of when the check was carried out is therefore just as important as keeping the document copy itself. If the Home Office investigates, they will want to see not only what you checked but when. A copy of a passport with no associated date of check is significantly weaker evidence than one accompanied by a note or system timestamp confirming it was seen before employment began.
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