What Is the Right to Rent Check for Landlords?

Who has to do a right to rent check, and where does it apply?

Every private landlord letting residential property in England, plus any agent who has taken the duty on in writing. The scheme has never been extended to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Why England is the only nation covered

The duty sits in Part 3, Chapter 1 of the Immigration Act 2014, which was piloted in the West Midlands in December 2014 and rolled out across England on 1 February 2016. The equivalent powers for the other three nations were never commenced.

If you own property either side of the border, only the English addresses need checks. Identity verification is still sensible everywhere as part of referencing.

Which adults you have to check

You check everyone aged 18 or over who will use the property as their only or main home, even if they are not named on the agreement, as the government’s right to rent guidance sets out. A partner who moves in on day one and never signs anything is still an occupier you are responsible for.

In an HMO let room by room, each individual agreement triggers its own check. You are not required to run a fresh check on a child who turns 18 partway through an existing tenancy.

Which lets fall outside the scheme

• Social housing, care homes, hospices, hospitals, hostels and refuges.
• Student accommodation provided or nominated by a higher education institution.
• Mobile homes, tied accommodation and leases granted for seven years or more.
• Holiday lets and short stays, because the guest is not using the property as a main home. That is one of the few compliance savings of an Airbnb-style let.

Everything else is in scope, including a single room let to a lodger in your own home. Rent level and tenancy length make no difference.

What are the three ways to check a tenant’s right to rent?

You can check original documents yourself, run a free online check using a share code, or pay a registered digital verification provider to check a British or Irish passport for you. All three produce the same statutory excuse.

The manual document check

You look at the original documents with the tenant present, either face to face or on a video call while they hold the documents. Photocopies emailed in advance are worth nothing on their own.

Check the photograph against the person, check the dates of birth agree across documents, and check nothing has been altered. Then copy the relevant pages and write the date of the check on the copy.

The online check with a share code

Anyone with an eVisa, a biometric residence permit or card, or settled or pre-settled status proves their status digitally. They generate a code at prove your right to rent and pass it to you.

You then enter the code and their date of birth on the Home Office landlord checking page and save the profile page it returns. Share codes expire, so run the check while the code is still live rather than filing it for later.

Digital verification for British and Irish citizens

British and Irish citizens cannot generate a share code, because they have no UK Visas and Immigration account. That leaves either a manual passport check or a certified provider.

Providers use identity document validation technology to read the chip in a passport and match it to a live selfie. From 1 October 2026 the provider has to be on the government register of digital verification services.

Which documents count as proof, and what splits list A from list B?

List A documents prove an unlimited right to rent and need no follow-up check. List B documents prove a time-limited right and start a clock you have to diary.

List A: an unlimited right to rent

A UK or Irish passport is the usual List A document, and it works even when it has expired. So does a certificate of naturalisation or an eVisa showing indefinite leave to remain.

Where a tenant has no passport, two documents from the second List A group can be combined, such as a full UK birth certificate with an official letter confirming their National Insurance number.

List B: a time-limited right to rent

These are documents showing permission that runs out, including a visa endorsement, a biometric residence card, or pre-settled status confirmed online. The check itself is identical, but your protection is dated.

For a tenant with time-limited leave the check has to be made no earlier than 28 days before the tenancy starts. Check too early and the record does not count.

When the tenant has no documents at all

Some people have an outstanding Home Office application or appeal and hold nothing you can look at. You contact the Landlord Checking Service and it answers yes or no within two working days.

A positive right to rent notice from that service is a List B result, so it carries a follow-up date. Turning the applicant away instead is the point at which many landlords stray into discrimination.

When do you need to do a follow-up check?

Only for tenants who produced List B evidence, and the deadline is the end of the eligibility period rather than the anniversary of the tenancy. Miss it and your statutory excuse lapses on that date.

How the eligibility period works

The period runs to whichever of three dates falls latest: 12 months from the date of your check, the expiry of the tenant’s permission to be in the UK, or the expiry of the document itself. In practice that is usually the visa expiry date.

Diary the date the moment you finish the first check. A repeat check that lands one day late leaves you exposed for the whole gap.

Follow-up checks under a periodic assured tenancy

Since 1 May 2026 every tenancy is a periodic assured tenancy with no fixed term, so there is no renewal paperwork to remind you. Landlords who used to re-check at each 12 month renewal of a let property agreement have lost their prompt.

Run the dates from a calendar instead of from the tenancy. If you hold a portfolio of any size, one shared spreadsheet of expiry dates is the cheapest control you will ever put in place.

What to do if the tenant no longer has the right to rent

You report it to the Home Office through the landlord reporting route and keep the reference. Reporting is what preserves your position, not evicting on the spot.

Carrying on without reporting is where the criminal offence starts. The maximum sentence is five years in prison.

How do you preserve your statutory excuse?

By checking before the tenancy is granted, copying the right pages, and recording the date. The excuse protects you from a civil penalty even if the documents later turn out to be forged, provided the forgery was not reasonably obvious.

What to copy and how long to keep it

Copy the photograph page and any page showing dates, endorsements or conditions, or save the online profile page as a file. Write or record the date you made the check on the copy itself.

Keep the records for the whole tenancy and for one year after it ends, then destroy them securely. They are personal data, so they need the same care as a tenant’s bank statements.

The mistakes that break the excuse

• Checking after the tenant has moved in rather than before the agreement is granted.
• Copying only the photo page and missing the visa endorsement.
• Leaving the record undated, which makes the eligibility period unprovable.
• Assuming your agent did it, with nothing in writing saying they took the duty on.
• Checking a tenant with time-limited leave more than 28 days before the start date.

Written agent instructions matter more than landlords expect. Without them the penalty notice comes to you, not to the agent.

What are the penalties for getting it wrong?

£10,000 per occupier for a first breach and £20,000 for a repeat breach inside three years, with lower levels for lodgers. Knowingly letting to a disqualified person is a separate criminal offence.

The civil penalty levels

The levels were raised on 13 February 2024 and are set out in the Home Office landlords’ code of practice. They are fixed amounts per person, so a four-adult house with no checks is a £40,000 exposure on a first breach.

The fast payment option and how to object

A first breach paid in full within 21 days attracts a 30% reduction, which takes a £10,000 penalty down to £7,000. The discount is not available on a repeat breach.

You have 28 calendar days to object in writing, and the Home Office has 28 days to reply. If the objection fails you have a further 28 days to appeal to the county court.

The criminal offence

Section 33A of the Immigration Act 2014 makes it an offence to let to someone you know, or have reasonable cause to believe, is disqualified. Conviction on indictment carries up to five years and an unlimited fine.

The realistic trigger is ignoring a negative follow-up check. Prosecutions are rare, but the offence is what turns a paperwork slip into a criminal record.

How do the renters’ rights act discrimination rules interact with this?

They do not change what you check, but they narrow how you can react to the answer. Since 1 May 2026, refusing someone because they claim benefits or have children carries a financial penalty of up to £7,000.

Check everyone the same way

The Home Office publishes a separate code of practice on avoiding unlawful discrimination during right to rent checks. Checking only the applicants who sound or look foreign to you is race discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

Run the same process for every adult applicant, and accept any valid route they choose. Insisting on a British passport, or refusing a share code, is the pattern the code singles out.

Where the renters’ rights act bites

Sections 33 to 40 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 ban rental discrimination on benefits status and on having children, and give councils a penalty of up to £7,000 for a breach. Time-limited immigration status is not a protected ground under those sections.

The practical risk is a rejection that looks like one thing and reads like another. A landlord who quietly stops letting to tenants on benefits after a difficult check now faces two enforcement routes rather than one.

Manage the risk with cover, not with filtering

If the worry behind a rejection is arrears, price it instead of avoiding it. Rent guarantee insurance typically costs £150 to £400 a year and pays while possession runs.

Pair it with legal expenses cover for the tribunal and court costs, and compare it against the rest of your landlord insurance at renewal.

What changes in the code of practice on 1 october 2026?

A new landlords’ code of practice takes effect on 1 October 2026 and makes registered providers the only acceptable route for an outsourced digital identity check. Until that date the 13 February 2024 code still applies.

Registered providers replace older arrangements

The old wording allowed any certified identity service provider. The new code requires the provider to be on the government register, and it updates the document lists to cover digitally issued versions.

If you use a referencing firm that bundles identity checks, ask now whether it is registered. An unregistered check after 1 October will not give you a statutory excuse.

What to do before october

• Ask your agent or referencing provider for written confirmation of registration.
• Re-date your follow-up diary so nothing falls due in the changeover week.
• Check that your records for every address on a multi-property policy are stored in one place rather than in separate agent files.

None of this is expensive, and the changeover is a good prompt to audit old files. Penalties are issued on the state of your paperwork, not on your intentions.