Digital right to work checks
for UK employers
Verify a candidate’s right to work before their first day, in one flow, on their own phone. British and Irish passport holders go through a digital identity check. Everyone else goes through the Home Office online service. You get one complete record either way, straight into your ATS.
Certified against the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework · ISO 27001 certified · API and SDK availableOne check, both routes, one audit file.
Most UK employers run two separate processes. A manual passport check for British and Irish staff, and a share code check for everyone else. Two processes means two places where something gets missed, and no single record when the Home Office asks to see one.
Digital right to work checks from DataChecker run both routes through one candidate link and return one file per hire. Your recruiters do not have to work out which route applies. The system reads the document and takes the candidate down the right path.
- Digital identity check for British and Irish passport holders
- Home Office online check by share code for every other candidate
- Follow-up dates captured automatically for time-limited permission
From 1 October 2026, your supply chain is your exposure
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 widens the right to work regime beyond conventional employment. Checks are expected to reach casual, agency-style and gig engagements, and a new extended liability regime means a business can be penalised for workers further down a chain of subcontracts. The process that covered fifty direct hires does not cover five hundred placements. Position as at September 2026, see the Home Office employer guidance.
A valid passport is not permission to work.
A genuine passport tells you who someone is. It does not tell you whether they may do the job you are offering, for how many hours, or until when. That gap is where civil penalties come from.
Under section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, the Home Office can penalise an employer who employs someone without permission to work, unless the employer can rely on a statutory excuse from a correctly completed check. The check has to happen before employment starts, and it has to be evidenced.
- Work conditions and hour limits recorded, not just identity
- Every check timestamped, evidenced and retrievable
- The same process applied to every hire, consistently
One candidate, two questionsBoth have to be answered before day oneHow a digital right to work check works.
1. Invite
The candidate gets a secure link by email, SMS or QR code. No account to create and no app to install. It runs on the phone they already have, in their own language.
2. Verify
The document is validated and the face is matched live. British and Irish passport holders go through the digital identity check. Everyone else is taken through the Home Office online service using their share code.
3. Record
The outcome, the evidence and the date land in your ATS or HR platform. Conditions and expiry dates are captured, so a follow-up check is never something someone has to remember.
Modular checks you can add
The digital right to work check is the core. Most UK employers layer more on top of it, depending on the role and the sector. Each module runs inside the same candidate flow, so the person is asked once and you get one file.
Driving licence verification
Check whether a driving licence is authentic and read out the licence categories automatically. You learn not only that the document is genuine, but what the holder is actually entitled to drive. Relevant anywhere driving entitlement is a hard condition for the role, from last-mile delivery to long-haul transport.
PEP and sanctions screening
Screen individuals against international sanctions lists and lists of politically exposed persons. The check runs inside the same verification flow, so nobody has to search separate registers. Relevant for organisations that carry a statutory duty to screen clients and need to evidence how that screening was done.
Follow-up check reminders
Where permission to work is time-limited, the expiry date is recorded and flagged before it passes, so the check is repeated in time.
Deepfake detection
Detect manipulated or AI-generated images during a remote identity check. Forged selfies and edited documents keep getting more convincing, exactly in flows where nobody is physically present. This check adds a layer underneath the biometric comparison, without the candidate noticing anything.
Facelink and location check
Tie a face check to a location reading at the moment of verification. You then know not only who is verifying, but from where. Useful in remote verification where the context of the check matters as much as the identity itself.
Digital signing
Have documents signed digitally as the closing step of the verification. Contracts, declarations and consent forms are signed at the moment the identity has already been established. Everything stays in one file, with no separate e-signing tool to maintain alongside your process.
What our clients say.
We chose DataChecker for their deep expertise in identity verification and work compliance. Their technology gives us the scalability, accuracy and local flexibility we need to digitise our global onboarding process and take it to a higher level.
Bram Kokke
VP IT & Digital, The Adecco Group
We needed to catch up on client identification and verification. That is exactly what we are doing now, together with DataChecker.
Devrim Demirbas
Director Retail, Anadolubank
PostNL has found a reliable partner in DataChecker. We work with the systems every day to meet our legal obligations around hired personnel.
PostNL
Parcel and postal delivery
We genuinely have a grip on who is allowed to work here, including people coming from abroad.
Carriere
International agency workers
Built to hold up in an audit.
A right to work check handles passport numbers, faces and immigration status. Retention is set per document type, and every check leaves a trace you can produce later. We are ISO 27001 certified and certified against the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework, both assessed by BSI.
Certification supports your obligations. It does not transfer them, and we would be wary of any supplier who says otherwise.
- ISO 27001 certified organisation
- Audit trail available for every verification
- Retention set per document type
- Data protection officer appointed
- Privacy by design
- Audit trail on request
- DPO appointed
See it run on your own process
Bring a real hiring scenario and we will run it live. Twenty minutes, a working environment, and a straight answer on volume, integration and pricing.
A working session, not a pitch.
We run the flow on the cases that actually land on your desk.
Whether it fits your ATS or HR system, and what it would take. Including a no.
Frequently asked questions.
Can you run digital right to work checks for British and Irish passport holders?
Yes. Employers can work with certified identity service providers that use Identification Document Validation Technology to run digital identity checks for British and Irish citizens holding a valid passport or Irish passport card. The candidate photographs their passport and takes a live selfie, and you receive a report with the document image, the outcome, the level of confidence reached and the date of the check.
What about candidates who are not British or Irish?
For everyone else the route is the Home Office online service. The candidate generates a nine-character share code from their UKVI account, valid for 90 days, and you check it alongside their date of birth. Since biometric residence permits were withdrawn at the end of 2024, a manual check of a physical BRP no longer establishes a statutory excuse, even where the card looks valid. DataChecker takes the candidate through this route inside the same flow, so your team does not switch between systems.
Does using DataChecker give us a statutory excuse?
No, and treat any provider that claims otherwise with caution. The statutory excuse belongs to the employer, and the employer remains responsible for compliance even where a provider carries out the technical verification. What DataChecker does is make the prescribed check straightforward to run correctly and simple to evidence afterwards, with the document image, the outcome, the level of confidence and the date held in one record per hire.
What changes on 1 October 2026?
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 widens the right to work regime beyond conventional employment. Checks are expected to apply to a wider set of working arrangements, including casual, agency-style and gig engagements, and a new extended liability regime can make a business liable for workers further down a chain of subcontracts. The Home Office published a draft revised Code of Practice on 30 June 2026, framed to come into force on 1 October 2026. Penalties stand at £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for a repeat breach within three years, for breaches identified on or after 13 February 2024. Position as at September 2026, see the Home Office employer guidance.
How does this fit our ATS, and what does it cost?
Results can be returned to your ATS or HR platform through our API or SDK, or you can run checks from the dashboard with no integration work at all. Pricing depends on volume and on which modules you switch on. Book a demo and we will go through volume, integration and pricing against your own hiring process.
