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Hospitality glossary · Compliance and safety

Right to work check

A right to work check is the verification an employer must complete before someone starts work, confirming they are legally allowed to do that job in the UK and creating a statutory excuse against a civil penalty.

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In practice

Right to work check in a real operation.

Definitions are easy. What matters is how the thing behaves in a real operation, and where it tends to go wrong.

What it looks like in a UK hospitality business

There are three routes: a manual check of original documents, a digital identity check through a certified provider for British and Irish passport holders, and a Home Office online check using a share code, which is how most eVisa and settled status holders are verified. Whichever you use, you keep a dated copy for the duration of employment plus two years. Getting it right before the first shift is what creates the excuse; doing it afterwards does not.

The mistake operators make

Running it once and filing it. Where someone has time-limited permission, the check has to be repeated before that permission expires or the statutory excuse lapses, and the civil penalty for an illegal worker runs to tens of thousands of pounds per person. In a sector that hires fast and at volume, this is the compliance failure that turns up in a licensing review.

Questions

Right to work check, answered.

Something here that doesn’t match what you’re seeing in your own business? That is usually worth a conversation rather than another article.

What does right to work check mean in hospitality?

A right to work check is the verification an employer must complete before someone starts work, confirming they are legally allowed to do that job in the UK and creating a statutory excuse against a civil penalty. There are three routes: a manual check of original documents, a digital identity check through a certified provider for British and Irish passport holders, and a Home Office online check using a share code, which is how most eVisa and settled status holders are verified. Whichever you use, you keep a dated copy for the duration of employment plus two years. Getting it right before the first shift is what creates the excuse; doing it afterwards does not.

What do operators get wrong about right to work check?

Running it once and filing it. Where someone has time-limited permission, the check has to be repeated before that permission expires or the statutory excuse lapses, and the civil penalty for an illegal worker runs to tens of thousands of pounds per person. In a sector that hires fast and at volume, this is the compliance failure that turns up in a licensing review.

Related terms

Worth reading next.

Premises licence

A premises licence authorises a specific building to carry out licensable activities such as selling alcohol, providing late-night refreshment or putting on regulated entertainment, under the Licensing Act 2003 in England and Wales.

Staff induction

Induction is the structured introduction a new starter gets to the business, the standards, the people and the job — covering their first days and weeks rather than a single morning.

Standard operating procedure (SOP)

A standard operating procedure, or SOP, is a written description of how one specific task is done correctly every time — opening the bar, receiving a delivery, handling an allergen order.

WHY Hospitality

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