From 1 October 2026, the duty to establish a worker’s right to work extends beyond direct employment to cover all forms of labour engagement. Agencies, umbrella companies and end clients across the supply chain are now in scope. The change comes through Section 48 of the Border Security Act, and the deadline is fixed.
This is not a tightening of existing guidance. It is an expansion of who must carry out right to work checks and when. Any organisation relying on the old assumption that checks are someone else’s responsibility should treat the next few weeks as a hard deadline.
What Changed on 1 October 2026?
Until now, the statutory right to work check duty applied primarily to direct employers taking on employees. Section 48 of the Border Security Act widens that duty to capture labour engaged through other arrangements, including workers supplied through agencies and employed by umbrella companies.
The practical effect is that more parties in a temporary-labour supply chain now hold a documented obligation to verify right to work. The check confirms a person’s legal entitlement to undertake the work in question in the UK, using the accepted methods: manual document checks, the Home Office online service, or an Identity Service Provider using Identity Document Validation Technology for eligible British and Irish passport holders.
Getting this wrong is expensive. Civil penalties for illegal working reach up to £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches, and there are criminal sanctions for knowingly employing someone without the right to work.
Who Is Responsible Across the Supply Chain?
The headline risk is ambiguity. When a worker moves from an end client, through a recruitment agency, to an umbrella company that employs them, more than one party may now hold a duty. The answer is not to assume another link in the chain has it covered.
Each organisation should confirm, in writing, where the check is performed and who retains the evidence. In a typical umbrella arrangement:
- The umbrella company, as the employer, carries the core statutory duty to check its employee’s right to work
- The recruitment agency should satisfy itself that a compliant check has been completed before placing the worker
- The end client should confirm the supply chain has documented processes, given the reputational and, in some cases, legal exposure
A statutory excuse against a civil penalty only holds if the check was carried out correctly and the evidence retained. Verbal reassurance from a supplier is not evidence. A documented process, with dated records and the correct check type for each worker, is.
How This Fits the Wider 2026 Compliance Picture
Right to work is one of several duties converging on the temporary-labour supply chain this year. Joint and several liability for umbrella PAYE and NICs came into force on 6 April 2026, making agencies and end clients liable for tax failures elsewhere in the chain. The Fair Work Agency, live since April 2026, now enforces minimum wage, statutory sick pay and holiday pay under a single body.
The common thread is accountability moving up and across the supply chain. Buyers of labour can no longer treat compliance as a supplier’s private concern. Right to work checks under Section 48 extend that logic to immigration status.
For agencies and end clients, the defensible position is the same across all of these regimes: know exactly who is responsible for what, get it documented, and verify it before a compliance check rather than after one.
FCSA’s Position
The 1 October 2026 deadline is not negotiable, and the penalties are severe. Every organisation in a temporary-labour supply chain should confirm now where right to work checks sit, whether the correct method is being used for each worker, and how long evidence is retained.
FCSA Accreditation gives recruiters and end clients assurance on this. FCSA Members are assessed against standards that include right to work verification and record-keeping, so a compliant check is not left to chance or to an unwritten assumption about who does it.
Agencies reviewing their supply chains ahead of the deadline should verify their providers through the FCSA Members register and read the FCSA guidance on the new right to work rules to confirm their processes hold up.
