A recruitment agency in Reading conducted a compliant right to work check on a Skilled Worker visa holder in March 2025. The check was textbook: share code verified through the Employer Checking Service, result recorded, copy retained. The visa was valid until September 2025. The statutory excuse was established.
In October 2025, a Fair Work Agency inspection revealed the worker was still employed. The visa had expired four weeks earlier. No follow-up check had been conducted. The agency had no statutory excuse for the period from September onwards. The civil penalty notice was issued for £45,000.
The initial check was perfect. The follow-up was missed entirely. And the initial check's perfection counted for nothing.
Why follow-up checks matter
The right to work regime in the UK is built on a binary concept: the statutory excuse. If you conduct a compliant check before employment begins, you have a statutory excuse. This protects you from civil penalties even if the worker turns out not to have the right to work — because you took reasonable steps to verify.
But for workers with time-limited permission to work — holders of Skilled Worker visas, Graduate visas, dependent visas, Student visas with work conditions, and others — that statutory excuse has an expiry date. It lasts until the permission expires, not indefinitely.
Once the permission expires, your statutory excuse expires with it. If the worker is still employed and you have not conducted a follow-up check to confirm their ongoing right to work, you have no defence. You are in the same position as if you had never checked at all.
The Home Office employer's guide is explicit: employers must conduct a follow-up check before the expiry date of the person's permission to work. This is not optional. It is not best practice. It is a legal requirement for maintaining your statutory excuse.
When to conduct the follow-up
The timing question is straightforward in principle but difficult in practice.
The rule: The follow-up check must be conducted before the worker's permission to work expires. The Home Office does not specify a minimum lead time, but the check must be completed before — not on and not after — the expiry date.
Practical recommendation: Conduct the follow-up check at least 28 days before the expiry date. This provides a buffer for complications — the worker may need time to generate a new share code, an application for further leave may be pending, or the Employer Checking Service may be experiencing delays.
Starting the process 28 days before expiry gives you time to:
- Notify the worker that a follow-up check is required
- Allow the worker to generate a new share code or gather documents
- Verify the new share code or documents through the appropriate method
- Follow up if the worker is slow to respond
- Escalate if there is a problem with the worker's immigration status
Critical point: Some employers believe there is a "28-day grace period" after visa expiry during which they can continue to employ someone without penalty. This is a myth. There is no grace period. If the visa expires on 1 September and you have not completed a follow-up check by 31 August, you have no statutory excuse from 1 September onwards.
The 28 days referenced in immigration law relates to the period during which an employer may have a continuing statutory excuse while a worker has made an in-time application for further leave to remain. This is a specific circumstance — not a general grace period for failing to check.
What documents to request at follow-up
The follow-up check follows the same process as the initial check: you must verify the worker's right to work using an acceptable document or method, and you must retain a record of the check.
For most workers with time-limited permission, the follow-up will involve one of the following:
A new share code. If the worker's visa or permission has been extended or renewed, they should be able to generate a new share code through gov.uk/prove-right-to-work. You verify this share code through the Employer Checking Service, exactly as you did at the initial check. The new share code will show the updated permission and new expiry date.
Updated documents. If the worker has a new passport with a new visa, or has received a new Biometric Residence Permit, you conduct a manual check on the new documents. Inspect the originals, take copies, and retain them.
A positive verification notice from the Employer Checking Service. This applies when the worker has an outstanding application for further leave to remain (submitted before their current permission expired). In this case, you contact the Employer Checking Service, explain the situation, and request a verification. If the application was made in time, the ECS will issue a positive verification notice, which provides a statutory excuse for six months.
eVisa confirmation. As the Home Office moves towards digital immigration status (eVisa), more workers will prove their status exclusively online. The verification process is the same: share code, Employer Checking Service, record the result.
What happens if permission has expired
There are several scenarios at the follow-up stage, and each requires a different response.
The worker has renewed permission. This is the straightforward case. They have a new visa, a new share code, or updated eVisa status. You verify it, record it, and set the next follow-up date based on the new expiry. Business continues.
The worker has an in-time pending application. The worker's visa has expired, but they submitted an application for further leave to remain before the expiry date. Under Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971, their existing leave is extended on the same terms while the application is pending. You should contact the Employer Checking Service, which will confirm whether an in-time application exists and issue a positive verification notice if so.
The worker has no pending application and no new permission. This is the scenario every employer dreads. The worker's permission has expired, they have not applied for further leave, and they no longer have the right to work. You must not continue to employ them. Doing so is an offence under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, carrying civil penalties of up to £45,000 for a first offence.
The worker is unable or unwilling to provide evidence. If the worker cannot produce a share code, cannot show updated documents, and does not have a pending application, you should contact the Employer Checking Service for guidance. If the ECS cannot confirm the right to work, you must not continue to employ the person.
In all cases, the key is to start the process early enough that you are not making these decisions on the day the visa expires.
Building a follow-up schedule that works
The businesses that get follow-up checks right share one characteristic: they do not rely on memory. They have a system — whether digital or manual — that triggers the process automatically, well in advance of expiry dates.
Step 1: Record expiry dates at the initial check. When you conduct the first right to work check and the result shows time-limited permission, record the expiry date immediately. This is your trigger date. It should be captured in your HR system, your compliance tracking tool, or at minimum a calendar.
Step 2: Set reminders at multiple intervals. A single reminder on the expiry date is too late. Set reminders at:
- 60 days before expiry: Initial notification to the worker. Inform them that a follow-up check will be required and advise them to check their immigration status.
- 28 days before expiry: Formal request for updated documentation or share code. This is your working deadline.
- 14 days before expiry: Escalation if no response. Contact the worker directly and formally.
- 7 days before expiry: Final escalation. If you have not been able to verify ongoing right to work, prepare for the possibility of having to end the employment.
Step 3: Assign responsibility. Follow-up checks should be assigned to a specific person or role, not left as a general HR task. If nobody owns the process, nobody does it.
Step 4: Document everything. Record every communication with the worker about the follow-up check, every request for documents, and every verification result. If a dispute arises, your records of the process demonstrate that you took reasonable steps.
Step 5: Track the next expiry. After the follow-up check, if the worker has new time-limited permission, immediately record the new expiry date and set the cycle again. Follow-up checks are not a one-time event for workers with time-limited permission — they recur for as long as the worker's permission remains time-limited.
The common failures
Having audited the compliance processes of hundreds of employers, several patterns recur in follow-up check failures.
No system for tracking expiry dates. The initial check was conducted correctly, but the expiry date was never recorded anywhere that triggers a follow-up. It exists on a photocopy in a filing cabinet, but nobody looks at filing cabinets proactively.
Reliance on the worker to raise it. Some employers assume the worker will tell them when their visa is due to expire. Many workers do. Some do not — either because they are unaware of the employer's obligation, because their own application is pending and they assume it is fine, or because they would prefer the topic not be raised.
Confusion about the 28-day "grace period." As noted above, there is no general grace period. Employers who believe they have 28 days after expiry to sort things out discover, when enforcement arrives, that they had no statutory excuse from the day after expiry.
Not knowing who to check. In businesses with high turnover or large workforces, simply identifying which workers have time-limited permission — and when that permission expires — is a significant challenge. If your HR records do not distinguish between workers with unrestricted and time-limited right to work, you cannot build an effective follow-up schedule.
Failing to act on the result. Perhaps the hardest failure: the follow-up check reveals that the worker's permission has expired and no application is pending. The employer, unwilling to lose a valued worker, continues the employment while "waiting to see what happens." This is not a compliance gap. It is an offence.
The visa expiry tracking imperative
For businesses with multiple workers holding time-limited permission — particularly in sectors like care, hospitality, and logistics that employ significant numbers of sponsored and visa-holding workers — follow-up checks are not occasional events. They are an ongoing compliance operation.
A care provider with 200 workers, 40 of whom hold time-limited permission with expiry dates spread across the year, needs a system that is running follow-up processes continuously. Not quarterly. Not when someone remembers. Continuously.
The cost of failure is not just the civil penalty. It is the disruption to service delivery, the reputational damage, the potential loss of sponsor licence for businesses that sponsor workers, and the personal impact on the worker who may be left without employment through no fault of their own.
Certifyd's Right to Work Portal tracks every visa expiry date, automates the follow-up notification process, and provides a single dashboard showing which workers need follow-up checks and when. No spreadsheets, no missed deadlines, no lost statutory excuses.