Right to Rent Checks: The 10-Minute Job With £20,000 Penalties

Right to rent checks are the immigration status checks landlords in England must run before letting someone occupy a property as their home. They are quick, free and mechanical — and the civil penalties for skipping them reach into five figures per occupier, with criminal liability reserved for landlords who knowingly let to disqualified people. This is a box you tick properly, every time.

Who you must check

Every adult (18+) who will live in the property as their main home — not just the named tenants. The partner moving in, the adult child, the friend staying long-term: all of them, before occupation starts. Checking only some occupiers, or only the people you feel unsure about, is both non-compliant and discrimination risk — the scheme requires checking everyone equally.

The three valid ways to check

• Online share code. For people with digital immigration status (including most non-UK nationals now): the prospective tenant gives you a share code, you check it on GOV.UK against their name and their face (in person or video call), and save the result. This is now the standard route for non-British citizens.
• Original documents. For British and Irish citizens: inspect the original passport (in date or expired) or other listed documents in the person's presence, check it looks genuine and matches the person, and copy it.
• Identity service providers. Certified digital identity checks are valid for British and Irish passport holders — useful for remote lettings.

Records and follow-up checks

Keep dated copies (paper or digital) of what you checked for the whole tenancy plus one year. If someone has a time-limited right to rent, diarise the follow-up check for the expiry date or 12 months, whichever is later; if a follow-up shows the right has lapsed, you report to the Home Office — that report is your statutory excuse, and the Renters' Rights regime does not change these duties (our RRA checklist covers what is changing).

Penalties, bluntly

Civil penalties were raised sharply in 2024: up to £5,000 per lodger and £10,000 per occupier for a first breach, and up to £10,000/£20,000 for repeats. A compliant check made before occupation is a complete "statutory excuse" — the entire game is doing the check on time and being able to prove it, which is why record keeping is not optional admin.

Agents, and the discrimination trap

Using a letting agent? The responsibility can sit with them — but only if your agency agreement says so in writing. Check it. Finally, the equality dimension: apply identical checks to every applicant, never demand "extra proof" from people based on accent or name, and remember a British passport is not the only acceptable evidence. The Home Office code of practice on avoiding discrimination is short and worth ten minutes — tribunal claims are the other five-figure risk in this area. For the rest of your pre-tenancy stack, see our referencing guide and full obligations list.

This is general information about the law in England, not personalised legal advice — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different rules, and landlord law changes regularly (some areas covered here are under active reform). For anything that affects a real tenancy, check GOV.UK for the current position or speak to a solicitor or a body like the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA).