SaroxaiRight to Rent checks: a landlord's guide
Before a new tenant moves in, landlords in England have to check they're allowed to rent in the UK. It's quick once you know the steps, but getting it wrong has two very different risks: a penalty if you let to someone without the right to rent, and a discrimination claim if you check people unevenly. This guide covers who it applies to, the three ways to do it, and how to keep yourself protected.
What's in this guide
Who it applies to
You need to check every adult who will live in the property as their only or main home, whether or not they're named on the tenancy. It applies to all of them regardless of nationality, because the point is to confirm each person's right to rent, not to guess who might need checking. The check has to be done before the tenancy starts.
The three ways to check
There are three accepted routes, and you only need one per person:
- Manual document check. You see original documents from the official list, in the person's presence (or over a live video call while holding the originals), check they look genuine and belong to them, then take a clear, dated copy and keep it.
- Online check with a share code. The tenant generates a share code on the government website and gives it to you with their date of birth. You enter both on the Home Office checking service and keep the result. This is how many people with digital status are checked.
- Certified identity check. For British and Irish citizens with a valid passport, you can use a certified provider's identity-checking technology instead of eyeballing the document yourself.
Keeping a statutory excuse
Here's the part that protects you. If you carry out the check properly and keep the right record, you gain a statutory excuse: a defence against a penalty if it later emerges that the tenant didn't actually have the right to rent. The check and the record go together. Doing the check but keeping no evidence, or copying a document without dating it, can leave you exposed. So treat the dated copy or the saved online result as the whole point, not an afterthought.
Follow-up checks
Some people have a time-limited right to rent. Where that's the case, you don't check once and forget it. You diarise a follow-up before their permission is due to expire and check again, and report to the Home Office if someone no longer has the right to rent. A missed follow-up is an easy way to lose the protection you earned at the start, so it belongs on your list of key dates.
Check everyone the same way
The flip side of the duty is just as important. You must apply the same process to every prospective tenant. Only checking people who "seem foreign", or asking some applicants for more than others, is unlawful discrimination and lands you in different trouble entirely. The safe approach is simple: the same check, the same documents, the same record, for everyone.
Keep the paperwork where it belongs.
Property Hub keeps tenancy records, documents and key dates together per property, with reminders before follow-ups fall due — all in your own iCloud.