The £60,000 Friday Mistake

Kate 0:00

Picture this. It's a Friday afternoon. You've just hired someone brilliant. Lovely interview. Genuinely the best person who applied. You can't wait for her to start on Monday. She's emailed you a photo of her passport. You've replied, great. All sorted. See you Monday. Bish, bash, done. On to the next thing. She starts on Monday. She's brilliant. Six months goes by, everything is fine. 18 months later, the Home Office picks up that her visa expired. She didn't tell you. You didn't check. She's been working illegally for the last seven months. The letter that lands on your desk is a civil penalty notice, up to £60,000. For one worker, you read it three times. You make a tea, you make another tea, you sit down. You did not do anything dishonest. You did not knowingly hire someone illegally. You just did the right to work, check the way you've always done it. A photo on WhatsApp. A glance. A nod. That nod is now £60,000. Because here's the bit nobody tells small business owners. You do not need to have hired someone illegally to get a civil penalty. You just need to have not done the check properly. Today we're going through the five mistakes I see most often. What they look like in real hiring situations. The questions most managers don't know to ask. And the simple pre-start checklist that removes the risk entirely. Pre-start. Not when you remember. Not before payroll. Pre-start. The welcome to the hive. Hey there, welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast for small business owners and HR professionals who want straight talking, plain English advice. I'm Kate, your host, HR Queen Bee, and someone who has had to gently tell more than one business owner that the photo of a passport on their phone is not, in fact, a right to work check. With me as ever, confused by the concept of borders, is Hazel, our well-being officer. She has the right to work in this living room and is exercising it by chewing the corner of a delivery box. The blog post on this, linked in the show notes, is the

Why Right To Work Checks Matter

Kate 2:20

written reference version. Five mistakes, the legal detail, the citations. This podcast is the employer's voice version, what it actually feels like in real life. The conversations, the questions you didn't know to ask, the pre-start checklist. Civil penalties for illegal working were tripled in February 2024. £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches. £45,000 per worker for first breach. These are not numbers from 20 years ago. These are the numbers right now. And the Home Office has been more active, not less, in the last 18 months. Right to work checks are not a paperwork formality. They are the single biggest piece of compliance hygiene in your business. Kettle on, let's go. The Buzz, the three ways to do a check. Quick recap, because half of you skipped this and the other half are doing it wrong. There are three legitimate ways to do a right-to-work check-in 2026. Method one, the manual check. You see the original document, passport, BRP, certificate of registration. You check it's genuine. You check the photo matches the person. You check it's in date. You take a clear copy. You write the date you checked, you sign it, you store it. That's a manual check. It's allowed

Three Valid Ways To Check

Kate 3:51

only for British and Irish citizens, and even then, most people use other methods now. Method 2. The online sharecode check. The candidate generates a sharecode via gov.uk. You log into gov.uk as an employer, enter the sharecode and their date of birth, and the system shows you their right to work status. You print or save the result. You note the date. You store it. This works for most non-British slash Irish workers and is the most common method now. Method three The IDSP check. For British and Irish citizens, you can use a certified identity service provider, a piece of software that verifies the document and the person. You pay the IDSP a small fee. They give you a report. You store it. That's it. Three ways. All of them must be done before the person starts work. All of them must be stored. All of them must be done in a specific format. A photo of a passport on WhatsApp is none of these. A scan of a BRP card you glanced at is none of these. A nod from your bookkeeper that they're fine is absolutely none of these. If you take nothing else from this episode, take that. A right-to-work check is a specific thing, done a specific way before a specific date. The hive check, the numbers, the numbers because they make the case. In 2024 to 25, the Home Office issued over 5,000 civil penalty notices to UK employers. The total value of penalties issued was over £155 million. The average penalty per worker was around £30,000. But the cap is now £45,000 for first breach, £60,000 for repeat. The sectors most penalized hospitality, care, construction, retail, and beauty. But the sectors with the fastest growing penalty notices, professional services and small offices.

The Numbers Behind The Crackdown

Kate 6:02

Why? Because they assume it doesn't apply to them. It does. Right to work, checks apply to every employer, every employee, every time, no exceptions. There is no minimum threshold. No, only if you have ex people. No, only if you suspect anything. Every single hire, every time. The sting, the five mistakes. Right, the five mistakes. These are the ones I see again and again. Not in dodgy businesses. In normal, decent, well-meaning small businesses. Mistake one, the WhatsApp passport. The candidate sends you a photo. You save it to your phone. You consider that a check. It is not a check. You did not see the original. You did not verify it. You did not store it in the format required. The photo on your phone, by itself, gives you zero statutory excuse. If the home office knocks, you have nothing. Mistake 2. The late

Five Mistakes That Trigger Penalties

Kate 7:03

check. The check is done after they've started work. Maybe in their first week. Maybe later when payroll asks for it. A late check is not a valid check. The legal protection, the statutory excuse, only applies if the check was done before they started work. If they start Monday and you check on Wednesday, you have no statutory excuse for Monday and Tuesday. If anything goes wrong, you are exposed. Mistake 3. The missing follow-up check. Some people have time-limited right to work. A visa, a BRP, a graduate scheme. You did the check on day one. Brilliant. Their visa expires 18 months later. You did not diary it. You did not recheck. They are now working illegally. You did the check at the start, but a single check at the start is not enough for time-limited workers. You must follow up before the expiry date. Every time. Every worker. Mistake 4. The wrong document. Some documents look official but are not on the Home Office's accepted list. A driving license is not enough on its own. A national insurance number is not enough on its own. A photo of someone's old expired passport is not enough. You must use a document or system from the current accepted list, and that list does change. Mistake 5. No record. You did the check. You looked at the document. You confirmed in your head that they had the right to work. You did not store anything. 18 months later, you can't prove the check happened. Without proof, it didn't happen. For legal purposes, storage matters as much as the check itself. The waggle dance, the pre-start checklist. Right. Here's the cure. A pre-start checklist that removes the risk. Five steps. Use it for every hire, every single one. Step one, the offer letter says subject to a satisfactory right to work check. Always. No exceptions. Even for the boss's nephew. This protects you if anything is off and you have to withdraw the offer. Step two, book the check before the start date. The moment they accept, calendar a slot for the check, not next week

The Pre-Start Checklist That Works

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sometime. A specific 30-minute slot before their first day. Most online sharecode checks take 10 minutes. There is no excuse to leave them late. Step 3. Use the right method. For British and Irish citizens, IDSP or manual. For everyone else, share code online check via gov.uk. Make it the same process every time. Step four, store the result properly. Save it as a PDF. File it in their employee record marked with the date. If their right to work is time limited, also diary the expiry date and a follow-up check three months before. Step 5. Train whoever does the check. If you delegate to a manager or admin person, they need 30 minutes of training on what they're doing and why. Not just do it like you did last time. This is too expensive to wing. That's the whole checklist. It is not complicated. It just has to happen, every time, on time, the same way. If you get this right, you can sleep easy. If you don't, every new starter is a small land mine. The Swarm, Mythbuster Parade, Myth 1. They had a UK passport, so I don't need to check. You still need to check. The check just looks slightly different. A British passport is one of the accepted documents, but you still need to see it, copy it, store it, and date it. Myth two. My bookkeeper does this. Maybe, maybe not. Find out exactly. Find out what method they use. Find out where the records are stored. Find out who runs the follow-ups for time-limited workers. If my bookkeeper does it, is followed by silence when you ask

Common Myths That Get You Caught

Kate 11:18

for detail, your bookkeeper does not, in fact, do it. Myth three. I can do retrospective checks if the home office knocks. Wrong. Once you've made the hire without a valid pre-start check, you have already lost the statutory excuse for the gap. You can do follow-up checks. You cannot retrospectively undo a missed start date check. Myth four. Civil penalties are only for big employers. Wrong. Most penalties are issued to small businesses. Big employers have HR teams who do this properly. Small businesses are the easier target. The honeycomb, your quick action list. Seven things. One, find your last hire's right to work check. Today. Where is it stored? Can you produce it? 2. Find every employee whose right to work is time limited. Diary the expiry dates. Set follow-up checks three months before each one. 3. Write down your standard pre-start process. One page. Shareable. Used every time. 4. Train one designated person plus a backup on how to do the check. 5. Update

Your Seven-Point Quick Action List

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your offer letter template, subject to a satisfactory right to work check. 6. For every hire in the last 12 months, sample audit 5 and confirm the check is on file. If it isn't, fix what you can now and tighten the system going forward. 7. Read the Home Office right to work checks, an employer's guide. It is free, it is current, it is in the show notes. Flying the hive. Write before I go. Right to work checks are not glamorous. They are not the bit of HR that makes you go, oh, I love that. They are dull, repetitive, and easy to defer. But the cost of getting them wrong is now genuinely scary. £60,000 per worker, per worker. Most small businesses cannot absorb a single penalty like that without serious damage. Some cannot absorb it at all. The good news, this is one of the few HR risks that is genuinely 100% preventable. If you

Final Warning And What To Do Next

Kate 13:43

have a process, you follow the process, and you train the person doing it. You do not get caught out. It is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy. Take one hour. This week, tighten this up. If this episode was useful, share it with another small business owner. They are probably doing the WhatsApp version too. Find me at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk or email buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't left a review yet, it takes 30 seconds, it genuinely helps, and it is easily the cheapest good deed you'll do all week. More satisfying than a biscuit with your tea. Not quite as good as cake, but nearly. Until next time, keep buzzing and take care of your people. Kettle on, standards up.