As an employer, it is your legal responsibility to make sure that all of your workers have the legal right to work in the UK. If you do not, you could face hefty fines and legal penalties. Under current UK law on the right to work, you could be subject to civil fines and serious damage to your reputation. Right to work controls are essential to prevent illegal work.
Failure to meet these requirements can have serious consequences, both for organizations and individuals. Penalties include fines, imprisonment, and disqualification. You should check your right to work before hiring a person to make sure that they are legally authorized to perform the work in question for you. The disciplinary hearing found the employee guilty of serious misconduct for refusing to comply with the client's instructions in relation to personal protective equipment and for failing to comply with the requirements of the employer's manual to maintain good relations with customers and cooperate to ensure a safe working environment. When a verification of the right to work has been carried out using the online right to work verification service, the information is provided in real time directly from the systems of the Ministry of the Interior and there is no need to check any of the documents listed below.
If you carry out the right to work checks correctly, you will establish a legal excuse limited in time. Biometric cards have been removed from the lists of acceptable documents used for manual verification of the right to work. During the first 28 calendar days, or during the six-month period of the VPN, your employee proves that their case has been resolved and they have been granted a residence permit, you can maintain a legal excuse to justify the duration of their immigration permit by carrying out a check in the usual way. The law requires employers to prove their right to work in order to fulfill their obligations and be able to invoke a legal excuse in case of alleged violations. If you know that you are hiring a person who is not allowed to do the work in question, you will have no legal excuse, regardless of whether or not you have carried out right-to-work checks.
If current employees have limited permission to stay and work, you should be sure to schedule and perform a follow-up check before their current leave period expires. You should also carry out a follow-up check on people who have a limited-time permit to work in the UK. Consequently, you may want to check that your contractors are carrying out the correct controls on the right to work of the people they employ. After the introduction of the new immigration system, employers should continue to control the right to work of all new employees through a three-stage process consisting of obtaining, verifying and copying the relevant identity documents and recording the date the check was carried out. Two groups of employees filed discrimination lawsuits against the employer: one group alleged that the condition of using hard work and vacations amounted to indirect sexual discrimination, and the other group argued that it was less favorable treatment because of something that arose as a result of a disability.
You must complete all three steps before starting work to ensure that you have carried out a check in the prescribed manner, in order to establish a legal excuse. Temporary measures allow employers to carry out right-to-work checks remotely using video calls and allow job seekers to send photos or scanned documents via email or mobile application instead of sending original documents. If an employer is found to have employed an illegal employee and has not carried out valid controls on the right to work, they could face civil sanctions and possible criminal penalties.
