The British check is a gate. The American form is a deadline.
We built the American side of this first, and the contrast is the most useful thing on either page. Form I-9 is a deadline that runs forward from hire: Section 1 by the first day, Section 2 within three business days after it. The paperwork chases the employment.
The British check is a gate. It has to be completed before the employee commences employment, and if it was not, there is no statutory excuse for that hire. Nothing catches up. Do the check three weeks late and you have a correct file and no protection for the three weeks already worked.
So what runs forward from a British check is not a deadline to finish it. It is the lifespan of your protection, and when that lapses you are exposed again on somebody who has worked for you for two years without incident.
A statutory excuse is a defence to the money, and only the money
The Home Office definition, quoted: an employer's defence against liability for a civil penalty, which can be obtained where the prescribed right to work checks have been carried out.
That civil penalty is up to £60,000 per illegal worker, and a correct check defeats it. What it does not touch is the separate criminal offence of employing somebody you knew or had reasonable cause to believe had no right to work, which carries up to five years and an unlimited fine.
Those two get conflated constantly, and the conflation runs in the dangerous direction: people assume a tidy file covers everything. It covers the penalty. It does not make a deliberate hire lawful, and "reasonable cause to believe" is a much lower bar than knowing.
Three answers to "how long am I covered", and the third is the quiet one
List A, a continuous right to work. A British or Irish citizen, settled status, indefinite leave. Check it properly once, before they start, and the excuse covers the entire employment. There is no follow-up check and no expiry date, and adding an annual diary reminder to re-check a British citizen is not extra caution: the guide warns specifically against inconsistency, and re-checking some people and not others is how that becomes a claim.
Permission that expires. The excuse runs to the expiry date and the follow-up is due on, or before, the date their permission comes to an end. Note the wording: the due date is the expiry date, not a week after it. One day late is uncovered.
A Positive Verification Notice. Used where somebody has an outstanding application or appeal and holds no document to show you, so you ask the Employer Checking Service and they confirm. That buys six months, and here is the detail that quietly shortens it: a PVN issued by the ECS will provide you with a statutory excuse for six months from the date stated in the PVN.
From the date on the notice, not from your check. Request a PVN, wait a fortnight for it to come back, file it the day it lands, and you have already spent a fortnight of the six months without doing anything wrong. Any tool counting from the day you filed it overstates your cover by exactly that lag, so this one asks for the date printed on the notice.
The share code is what everybody searches, and Britons cannot use it
There are three routes. The Home Office online check needs a share code and their date of birth, and you have to look at the photograph on the profile against the person in front of you. A screenshot of their view of the service is not a check, because it is not the employer view and it proves nothing about who sent it.
A manual document check is obtain, check, copy, and the copy has to be in a format that cannot be altered. It can be done over a live video call, provided you are holding the original documents yourself rather than looking at them on camera.
Digital verification through a certified provider covers British and Irish citizens with a valid passport. The current guide calls this Digital Verification Services and older guidance calls the same thing Identity Document Validation Technology, so both names are in circulation.
And the thing that catches people: a British or Irish citizen has no share code. The online service covers people whose status the Home Office holds digitally, which they are not. Asking a British bricklayer for a share code is asking for something that does not exist.
The records outlive the job by two years
Copies are kept for the duration of the person's employment and for a further two years after they stop working. So a leaver's file cannot be cleared on their last day, and a penalty arriving eighteen months later is defended with a copy taken before they ever started.
Worth pairing that with the American rule, because they are differently shaped again: the US retains for three years after hire or one year after termination, whichever is later. Britain runs from the leaving date only.
Whether a document is acceptable is Annex A
It does not tell you whether a document is acceptable. That is Annex A of the Home Office guide, it runs to pages, and it changes: a list reproduced here would be a snapshot somebody would trust after it had gone stale, which is worse than sending you to the current one.
It also does not tell you whether a particular document is genuine, which is the part of the check no software does. And note that a draft employer's guide dated 16 July 2026 exists alongside the 26 June 2025 version that is in force, so read the current guide before acting on anything with money attached.
What it does is the arithmetic nobody does reliably: whether the check landed in time to be worth anything, when your cover ends, and when you can finally throw the copies away.
Common questions
When does a right to work check have to be done?
Before employment begins. The Home Office guide says the check must be conducted before the employee commences employment, and if it was not, there is no statutory excuse for that hire. A check done later does not repair the gap: the exposure for the period already worked stays. This is the sharpest difference from the American Form I-9, which is completed after hire with three business days to do it.
What is a statutory excuse?
The Home Office defines it as an employer’s defence against liability for a civil penalty, which can be obtained where the prescribed right to work checks have been carried out. So it is a defence to the money, not to everything. Employing somebody you knew or had reasonable cause to believe had no right to work is a separate criminal offence carrying up to five years and an unlimited fine, and no paperwork excuses that.
How much is the fine for employing an illegal worker?
Up to £60,000 for each illegal worker as a civil penalty, and you do not pay it if you can show you made the correct checks. Separately there is a criminal offence for knowingly employing somebody without the right to work, punishable by up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine.
How long does the excuse last?
It depends what the right to work rests on. A List A document, meaning a continuous right to work, gives a continuous excuse for the whole employment with no follow-up check at all. Time-limited permission gives an excuse that runs to the expiry date. A Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service gives six months, counted from the date stated on the notice rather than from the day you did your check.
When is the follow-up check due?
The guide says a follow-up check should take place on, or before, the date their permission comes to an end. So the due date is the expiry date itself, not a grace period after it. One day late is uncovered rather than nearly covered, and it is the most common way a good employer loses protection: the first check was perfect and nobody diarised the second.
Can I check a British citizen with a share code?
No. British and Irish citizens have no share code to give you, because the Home Office online service covers people whose status it holds digitally. For them the routes are a manual document check, or digital verification through a certified provider if they hold a valid passport. That is worth knowing before you ask somebody for a code they cannot produce.
How long do I keep the copies?
For the duration of the person’s employment and for a further two years after they stop working. So the file cannot be cleared out on somebody’s last day, and a penalty landing eighteen months after they left is defended with a copy you took before they started.
Should I only check people who look foreign?
No, and doing so is its own problem. The guide says an employer should not only check the status of those who appear to you likely to be migrants, and requires consistency across all prospective employees. Checking some people and not others, or re-checking some repeatedly, is how a compliance habit turns into a discrimination claim.