Right to Rent Checks for Landlords

A right to rent check confirms that every adult who will live in a rented property is legally allowed to be in the UK before you grant them a tenancy. It is a legal duty on landlords in England, introduced under the Immigration Act 2014, and it applies whether you let through an agent or manage the tenancy yourself, and whether the tenant is British, from another country, or somewhere in between.

Getting it right matters because the process is specific about who checks, how the check is done, and how long you keep the evidence. Getting it wrong, even unintentionally, can lead to a civil penalty, and knowingly letting to someone without the right to rent is a criminal offence. This guide walks through who needs checking, how the online process works, and what to do afterwards.

Who must check

If you are the landlord under a residential tenancy agreement in England, you (or your letting agent, if you have given them this responsibility in writing) must check every occupier aged 18 or over before the tenancy starts, not just the person named on the tenancy agreement. This includes occupiers who will live in the property but are not paying rent directly, such as a partner or adult family member moving in alongside the named tenant.

The right to rent scheme currently applies in England only. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland do not have an equivalent statutory right to rent duty, so if you let property outside England, this specific scheme does not apply, though other tenant vetting and immigration considerations may still be relevant. Certain tenancy types are excluded from the scheme entirely, including some student accommodation arranged directly through an educational institution and certain social housing allocations, so check the official guidance if your letting falls outside a standard private tenancy.

If you use a letting agent and want them to carry out checks on your behalf, put this in writing, for example in your agency agreement, and confirm with the agent which checks they have actually done before the tenancy starts. Responsibility for a missed or incorrect check can still fall back on you as the landlord if the arrangement with the agent was never clearly documented, so treat this as something to confirm explicitly rather than assume.

British and Irish nationals versus overseas nationals

For British and Irish citizens, the check is a manual document check. You look at an original, valid document (a British or Irish passport is the simplest route, though other combinations of documents are also accepted), confirm it appears genuine and belongs to the person in front of you, and take a clear copy along with the date you checked it.

For most non-British and non-Irish nationals, the process is now overwhelmingly online rather than manual. Many people with permission to be in the UK, including those with settled or pre-settled status, work visas or other immigration permissions, hold their status digitally rather than on a physical document, since the Home Office has moved away from physical Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs) for most cases. This makes the online checking service the standard route for confirming their right to rent, rather than an exception.

The online share code flow

For a tenant who needs to prove their right to rent online, the process generally works like this:

1. The tenant logs into the "view and prove your right to rent" service on GOV.UK using their Home Office account and generates a share code. The code is typically valid for 90 days.
2. The tenant gives you the share code along with their date of birth.
3. You use the landlord-facing "view a tenant's right to rent" service on GOV.UK, enter the share code and date of birth, and the service returns a result confirming whether the person has the right to rent, and whether that right is time-limited.
4. You save or print the result, or take a screenshot, as your evidence of the check, and note the date you carried it out.

If a prospective tenant cannot use the online service, for example because they do not hold digital immigration status and instead have an older physical document, you may need to carry out a manual check of that document instead, or in some cases use the Home Office's Employer Checking Service equivalent for landlords when a person is unable to produce evidence themselves. If you are ever unsure which route applies, the GOV.UK guidance and the Landlord Checking Service exist specifically to resolve edge cases like this. See our guide to the right to rent share code for a closer walkthrough of generating and using a code.

Follow-up checks

If a tenant's right to rent is time-limited, for example because their visa has an expiry date, the initial check is not the end of your obligation. You must carry out a follow-up check either shortly before their current permission expires, or 12 months after the previous check, whichever is later, and continue doing so for as long as the tenancy continues. This is sometimes missed by landlords who treat the right to rent check as a one-off task at the start of a tenancy rather than an ongoing duty tied to the tenant's specific immigration status.

Build the follow-up date into whatever system you use to track tenancy and compliance dates, in the same way you would track a gas safety certificate or an EICR renewal. Missing a follow-up check on a tenant whose permission has since expired removes the statutory defence that a landlord otherwise has if it later turns out the tenant no longer has the right to rent.

As a worked example, if a tenant's initial check in March 2026 shows permission to stay until March 2027, you would schedule a follow-up check for shortly before March 2027, not 12 months after the original check date, since the visa expiry is the earlier of the two triggers in this case. If instead their permission had no fixed end date but was still time-limited under the terms shown by the online service, the 12-month anniversary of the previous check becomes the relevant trigger. Getting this distinction right is easier if you record both the check date and the expiry date shown by the online result, rather than just the date you carried out the check.

Record keeping

Keep a clear copy of every check you carry out, whether that is a photocopy or scan of a physical document, or a saved screenshot or printout of an online check result, along with the date the check was made. You need to retain this evidence for the duration of the tenancy and for at least one year after it ends. This record is what gives you a statutory defence if it later emerges that a tenant did not, in fact, have the right to rent, provided you carried out the check properly and in good faith at the time.

Penalties

Letting to someone without checking their right to rent, or continuing to let to someone you know or have reasonable cause to believe does not have the right to rent, can result in a civil penalty per illegal occupier, with higher penalties for landlords who have been found in breach before. Knowingly letting to someone without the right to rent is also a criminal offence, which can carry a more serious sentence than the civil penalty route. Exact penalty amounts have changed over time and are set out in the Home Office's Code of Practice, so check GOV.UK for the current figures rather than relying on a number you have seen quoted elsewhere, since it may be out of date.

The safest position is to treat right to rent checks as a non-negotiable step before granting any tenancy, run consistently for every occupier regardless of nationality or how confident you feel about their status. Checking only tenants who "look like" they might not have the right to rent is both discriminatory and legally risky, since the scheme is designed to be applied uniformly. For the wider picture of what else you are legally required to do as a landlord, see our landlord legal responsibilities guide, and once the tenancy is agreed, our guide to deposit protection covers the next compliance step most landlords need to get right.

How Property HQ helps

Property HQ gives you a place to log right to rent check dates, follow-up check deadlines and supporting evidence alongside the rest of your compliance record, so a time-limited status does not quietly lapse without you noticing. Combined with your gas safety, EICR and deposit protection deadlines, it keeps every date that matters to a new tenancy in one view rather than scattered across email threads and folders.

Disclaimer

This guide is general information for UK landlords, not legal or immigration advice. Right to rent rules and penalties change from time to time. Check GOV.UK's current Code of Practice and checking services before carrying out or relying on a check.