Right to Work Checks for Transport Employers: Share Codes, Documents and the Civil Penalty

Transport hires fast - drivers, pickers, agency-conversion staff, seasonal waves - and speed is exactly when the right to work check gets skipped. The law is not interested in the pace of your recruitment: you must check that a job applicant is allowed to work for you in the UK before you employ them, and employing an illegal worker without a correct check carries a civil penalty.

The three ways to check

1. Online, with a share code the applicant gives you - the standard route for anyone with a digital immigration status.
2. Original documents - the applicant’s physical documents, checked in their presence.
3. An identity service provider using Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT), under the employer’s guide to right to work checks.

One group cannot use the online route: British and Irish citizens cannot get a share code, so their check is original documents - passport or passport card, for example - or an IDVT provider. And a legacy note: you no longer accept biometric residence cards or permits - ask for a share code instead.

What a manual check involves

Ask for the original documents; check them with the applicant present; make and keep copies and record the date of the check. The check itself verifies: the documents are genuine, original, unchanged and belong to the person presenting them; photos match across documents and look like the applicant; dates of birth are consistent; and different names across documents are explained by supporting evidence - a marriage certificate, a divorce decree. For non-British, non-Irish citizens, add three more: the right to work has not expired, the permission covers the type of work on offer (including any hours limit), and for students, evidence of their study and vacation times.

The copying rules that save you

The copy is the statutory excuse, so the rules are precise: make a copy that cannot be changed (a photocopy, not a photo on someone’s phone that can be edited); make it clear; for passports, copy every page with the expiry date, the holder’s details and any endorsements; for all other documents copy completely. Keep the copies for the whole employment and for 2 years after it ends, record the date the check was made, and handle it all within data protection law.

Time-limited permission means a second check

If the employee’s right to work is time-limited, the check is not one-and-done: you must check their documents again when the permission is due to expire. The diarised follow-up is the part busy HR teams drop, and it is the part that converts a clean first check into an illegal-employment problem two years later.

The edges

• Existing employees from the EU, EEA or Switzerland who came to the UK before 1 July 2021 do not need checks.
• Employing EEA and Swiss citizens who arrived from 1 January 2021 generally requires a sponsor licence.
• If an applicant cannot show documents - an outstanding Home Office application, or pre-1989 arrival without proof - you must ask the Home Office to check their status.
• You must not discriminate because of where someone is from. The check applies to every hire, uniformly, or the process itself becomes the problem.

The seasonal surge deserves a final word, because peak recruitment is where checks fail in practice. Hundreds of seasonal hires processed in weeks, agency conversions done by handshake, depot managers “starting people Monday” before HR sees the file - every one of those shortcuts is an unchecked worker, and the civil penalty attaches to the employer who skipped the check, not to the urgency that caused it. The fix is process, not caution: a check that can be completed and evidenced in the same hour as the offer, every time, whoever the hire.

For a sector whose workforce is international by default, the right to work check is not bureaucracy around the hire - it is part of the hire, dated, copied and diarised.

The checklist

1. Check before employment, every hire, same process for everyone.
2. Choose the right route: share code, original documents, or IDVT provider.
3. Copy properly - unchangeable, complete, dated - and keep for employment plus 2 years.
4. Diarise every time-limited permission for its follow-up check.
5. Use the Home Office checking service when documents cannot be shown.

Do not forget the follow-up. Where a driver has time-limited permission to work in the UK, the initial check only covers you until that permission expires, so diarise the follow-up check before the date passes. Keep every check - document copies, the date and the name of the person who carried it out - for the whole employment and for two years after it ends. That file is your statutory excuse if the Home Office ever comes asking.

Sources

• Checking a job applicant’s right to work - GOV.UK