Quick answer: Before any kitchen worker’s first shift, you must complete one of three checks: a manual check of original documents (any worker), a digital identity check (valid British or Irish passport holders only), or a Home Office online check using a share code and date of birth (every non-British, non-Irish citizen). An expired biometric residence permit proves nothing; the online check is the only valid route for those workers. Get it wrong and the civil penalty starts at £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach. For agency-supplied kitchen staff, the agency is the employer and carries the check duty and the penalty. From 1 October 2026, the rules extend to casual workers on worker’s contracts and to labour supply chains.
Kitchens are the most visited workplaces in Britain
Home Office enforcement teams made 3,559 illegal working visits to restaurants, takeaways and cafes during 2025, more than to any other sector, and those visits produced 2,523 arrests (GOV.UK, Illegal working and enforcement activity to the end of December 2025). Across all sectors, 2,438 civil penalties were issued to employers in the same year, worth over £130 million.
The first thing an officer asks for on a kitchen visit is your right to work evidence. Not the rota, not the allergen matrix. The check records.
The rules themselves are short. What catches operators out is that three parts of the system changed shape recently: physical immigration documents were switched off at the end of 2024, the current employer’s guide was rewritten on 26 June 2025, and a further extension of the regime is already legislated for 1 October 2026. This guide covers the position as of July 2026 for anyone hiring kitchen staff directly or through an agency, and it sits alongside our guide to DBS checks for kitchen staff, which answers the other compliance question we get asked most weeks.
The three checks that count
The Home Office employer’s guide (26 June 2025 edition, the current one) prescribes exactly three ways to check, and one of them must be completed before employment starts. Do the check after the first shift and you have no statutory excuse for that worker, however clean the paperwork looks later.
| Check route | Who it applies to | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Manual document check | Any worker with acceptable original documents | Obtain the original documents, check them, take a clear copy and record the date |
| Digital verification service (DVS) | Holders of a valid British or Irish passport, or Irish passport card, only | An identity service provider verifies the passport digitally; you keep the output |
| Home Office online check | All non-British and non-Irish citizens | The worker gives you a share code; you enter it with their date of birth at GOV.UK’s check a job applicant’s right to work service |
Two details in that table decide most real cases in a kitchen.
First, the DVS route (the digital check some providers still call an IDVT or IDSP check; the Home Office renamed it in the June 2025 guide) needs a valid passport. A British chef whose passport ran out last year cannot go through it. Citizenship is not enough on its own, so that chef goes down the manual route with other acceptable documents instead. And if you use an identity provider for these checks, the civil penalty liability stays with you, not the provider.
Second, the routes do not overlap. British and Irish citizens cannot get a share code, so you cannot ask them for one. Everyone else must be checked online, and for most of them the online check is the only route that gives you a statutory excuse. There is a fallback for edge cases: where none of the three checks can be completed, for example because the worker has an outstanding in-time application with the Home Office, the Employer Checking Service can issue a Positive Verification Notice. That service is a safety valve, not a fourth route.
The statutory excuse is the whole point of the exercise. Complete the right check correctly, before day one, and you have a defence against a civil penalty even if the worker turns out to be working illegally. Skip it, botch it, or do it late, and there is no defence. That is also why the checks apply to every hire, British chefs included: the excuse only exists for workers you actually checked.
Keep the evidence securely for the duration of employment plus two years.
The expired BRP trap
Biometric residence permits stopped being issued on 31 October 2024, and every physical BRP expired by 31 December 2024. The system moved to eVisas.
The trap is that millions of those expired cards are still in wallets, and a kitchen worker presenting one usually believes it still proves their status. It does not. GOV.UK is blunt: you can no longer accept biometric residence cards or permits; ask the applicant for a share code instead. A manual check of an expired BRP gives you no statutory excuse at all.
What the expired card can still do is help the worker log in. Their BRP number works as a credential for their UKVI account, where they generate the share code you need. So the practical script for a hiring manager is one line: “I can’t accept the card, but you can use it to log into your UKVI account and send me a share code today.”
One more wrinkle: the temporary border arrangements that let carriers accept recently expired BRPs during the eVisa transition never extended to right to work checks. Whatever the card once did at a border, in a hiring context it proves nothing.
Follow-up checks when permission is time-limited
A check is not always a one-off event.
Workers with a continuous right to work (British and Irish citizens, indefinite leave to remain, and EU Settlement Scheme status, including pre-settled status) need checking once, before they start, and never again. The Home Office dropped repeat checks on pre-settled status holders in 2024, and some operators are still re-checking them every couple of years for no reason.
Workers with time-limited permission are different. Their statutory excuse is time-limited too, and to keep it you need a follow-up check on or before the date their permission expires. Put the expiry dates in a diary the day you hire, because the week a Skilled Worker visa lapses is exactly the week nobody in a busy kitchen is thinking about paperwork.
If the worker has made an in-time application to extend or vary their permission, or has an appeal or administrative review pending, your excuse continues for up to 28 days after expiry while you get a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service or complete an online check. A PVN then covers you for six months. The 28-day window only exists for people already on your payroll; it never applies to a new hire.
Agency kitchen staff: who carries the liability
For operators booking temporary chefs, this is the section that matters, and the answer has two halves.
For workers an agency employs and supplies to you, the check duty and the civil penalty exposure sit with the agency, because liability follows the legal employer. A restaurant, hotel, care home or school using genuinely agency-employed relief chefs is not required to establish its own statutory excuse for them. The Home Office still expects you to do your homework: its guidance strongly encourages businesses to check that their contractors and labour providers carry out compliant right to work checks. And the protection only holds while the worker really is the agency’s employee. If the arrangement drifts until you are, in substance, the employer, the exposure is yours.
For workers you employ directly, no third party can do the check for you. The employer’s guide is explicit that you cannot establish a statutory excuse where the check was performed by a recruitment agency or professional adviser on your behalf. An agency shortlisting candidates for your permanent sous chef vacancy can collect documents to speed things up, but your own team must complete the check before day one.
In practice, the question to put to any agency is simple: show me, in writing, how you check. At Chefs Bay every chef and kitchen porter is engaged and checked by us before they are offered a single shift, share-code verified where the worker is not a British or Irish citizen, with follow-up dates tracked centrally. The DBS-checked kitchen staff page sets out the wider vetting file we hold, and for school kitchen placements the right to work evidence forms part of the written assurance letter the school receives before anyone starts. Care settings get the same file; our care home chef agency commitment covers it alongside DBS and IDDSI.
Booking cover rather than researching? If you need kitchen staff whose right to work is already verified and documented, get staff now. We confirm compliance status with the booking, before the chef travels.
Right to work evidence is also on the list of documents a Fair Work Agency inspector will expect to see since the agency went live in April; our guide to the April 2026 employment law changes covers what else is in that file.
What changes on 1 October 2026
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 comes into force on 1 October 2026, and it widens who must check.
Today the duty bites on employers checking employees. From 1 October it extends to individuals engaged under a worker’s contract, to individual sub-contractors, and to labour supplied through contractual chains, however long the chain. Businesses engaging casual and zero-hours kitchen staff as workers rather than employees, a common arrangement across hospitality, come squarely into scope. Online platforms that match customers with service providers are caught too.
The draft revised code of practice, published 30 June 2026, keeps genuine end-clients out of the extended liability: a business commissioning work or services purely for its own benefit, with no onward supply, is not treated as the employer of people further down the chain (Lewis Silkin, 2 July 2026). But anyone supplying labour onwards, and anyone engaging casuals directly on worker’s contracts, needs checks, contractual terms and audit trails in place by the end of September. The penalty amounts do not change, and the updated employer’s guide had not been published as of early July 2026.
Two things to do before October. Ask every labour provider in your chain to confirm, in writing, that they run compliant checks on all supplied staff and will evidence them on request. And if you engage any casual kitchen staff directly as workers without checking them today, start checking now rather than building the habit under deadline.
We will update this guide when the final code of practice and the revised employer’s guide are published.
What getting it wrong costs
The numbers moved sharply on 13 February 2024 and have not moved since. Under the code of practice in force, the civil penalty starting point is £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches (GOV.UK, Code of practice on preventing illegal working, 13 February 2024). The current employer’s guide headlines the ceiling: up to £60,000 per illegal worker. Employ four people who fail a check you never ran and the arithmetic is grim.
The civil penalty is the lesser exposure. Knowingly employing someone who lacks the right to work, or employing them with reasonable cause to believe it, is a criminal offence under section 21 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, as amended by the Immigration Act 2016, carrying up to five years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
There is a reputational layer as well. The Home Office publishes a named list of penalised employers every quarter. For a care home or a school caterer, appearing on it reads very differently than it does for a takeaway, and commissioners notice.
Frequently asked questions
Can I accept an expired BRP for a right to work check?
No. All physical biometric residence permits expired by 31 December 2024, and GOV.UK states you can no longer accept them. A manual check of an expired BRP gives you no statutory excuse. Ask the worker for a share code instead; they can use their expired BRP details to log into their UKVI account and generate one, and you verify it with their date of birth on the GOV.UK checking service.
Do I need to check British chefs too?
Yes. The statutory excuse against a civil penalty only exists for workers you actually checked, and two of the three check routes exist for exactly this group. A British or Irish chef is checked manually against original documents or, if they hold a valid passport, through a digital verification service. They cannot give you a share code, because British and Irish citizens cannot generate one.
Who does the right to work check on agency kitchen staff, me or the agency?
The agency, where the agency is the employer, which is the normal arrangement for temp chefs and kitchen porters. Liability for the civil penalty follows the legal employer. You are not required to run your own check on the agency’s employees, but Home Office guidance strongly encourages you to verify that your labour providers check properly, so ask for their process in writing. The one thing you cannot do is outsource checks on your own direct hires: a check performed by an agency or adviser on a worker you employ gives you no statutory excuse.
What happens if a chef’s visa expires while they work for me?
If their permission is time-limited, you need a follow-up check on or before the expiry date to keep your statutory excuse. If they have an in-time application, appeal or administrative review pending with the Home Office, your excuse continues for up to 28 days after expiry while you obtain a Positive Verification Notice from the Employer Checking Service or complete an online check. A PVN protects you for six months. If none of that is in place, they cannot keep working for you.
How long do I need to keep right to work records?
For the duration of the worker’s employment and two years after it ends. Keep a clear copy of the documents or the online check result, plus the date the check was made, stored securely. On an enforcement visit, the record of the check is your defence.
Does a correct check protect me from every penalty?
It protects you from the civil penalty: a compliant check completed before employment starts gives you a statutory excuse even if the worker is later found to be working illegally. It does not protect you from prosecution if you knowingly employ someone without the right to work, or have reasonable cause to believe they lack it. That offence carries up to five years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine, and no paperwork cures actual knowledge.
What changes for hospitality on 1 October 2026?
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 extends right to work checks beyond employees to workers on worker’s contracts, individual sub-contractors and labour supplied through contractual chains. Operators engaging casual kitchen staff directly as workers will need to check them, and labour providers face direct liability through the chain. Penalty amounts stay the same. The final code of practice and updated employer’s guide were still awaited in early July 2026.
Get checked staff, not checking homework
Every chef, cook and kitchen porter we supply arrives with the right to work check done, recorded and ready to show an inspector, alongside DBS at the level the setting requires. That holds whether the venue is a London hotel kitchen or a care home in Manchester, and we put the compliance file in writing before the shift, not after the question.
If you need kitchen staff this week and want the paperwork to be someone else’s job, get in touch. We confirm availability and compliance status within 2 hours.