Landlord Laws & Legislation

Right to Rent (Immigration Act 2014): Landlord's Guide

Reviewed by Bradley Askew, Solicitor (non-practising), England & Wales · SRA 300076

Last reviewed 2026-06-22

The Immigration Act 2014 introduced the 'right to rent' scheme — a duty on landlords to verify the immigration status of every adult occupier before granting a residential tenancy. From 2024 the penalty regime tightened substantially: civil penalties of up to £5,000 per occupier for first offences, £10,000 for repeat offences. A landlord who carries out the prescribed check correctly has a 'statutory excuse' — they cannot be penalised even if the occupier later turns out to have had no right to rent. This page covers who must be checked, what documents are acceptable, the online eVisa check service, re-checks for time-limited rights, the penalty regime, and the discrimination tensions in the regime's operation.

Why right to rent matters

The Immigration Act 2014 introduced the "right to rent" scheme — a duty on landlords to verify the immigration status of every adult occupier before granting a residential tenancy. The scheme was rolled out nationally in February 2016 and has been a substantive landlord obligation ever since. Civil penalties for non-compliance start at £5,000 per occupier and rise to £10,000 for repeat offences. From 2024 the penalty regime tightened substantially — the previous figures of £80-£500 per occupier had been seen as inadequate and were raised to align with the broader housing enforcement framework.

Right to rent is conceptually simple — check that everyone aged 18 or over who will live in the property has the right to do so under UK immigration law — but procedurally exacting. The check must be carried out before the tenancy starts, must use specified documents (or an online share-code verification), must be repeated for occupiers with time-limited rights to rent, and must be documented in a way that survives scrutiny if the local authority or Home Office investigates.

A landlord who carries out the prescribed check correctly has a "statutory excuse" — they cannot be penalised even if the occupier later turns out to have had no actual right to rent. The check, properly done, is the landlord's protection. A landlord who has not carried out the check, or has carried it out incorrectly, has no protection regardless of what the occupier has actually done.

Who must be checked

The right-to-rent regime applies to every adult occupier of every privately let residential property in England. The regime does not apply in Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland — those administrations have not adopted it.

Specifically:

Every named tenant on the tenancy agreement must be checked.
Every adult member of the household who will occupy the property must be checked, even if they are not named as a tenant — partners, adult children, lodgers of the tenant.
Lodgers in the resident landlord's home must also be checked — the regime applies to lodger arrangements as well as tenancies.
Persons aged under 18 at the start of the tenancy do not need to be checked, but the landlord should record their date of birth so a re-check can be carried out if they reach 18 during the tenancy.

The checks must be carried out before the tenancy starts. A check carried out after the tenant has moved in does not protect the landlord — the offence is committed the moment the unchecked tenant takes occupation.

What documents are acceptable

The Home Office prescribes the documents that satisfy a right-to-rent check. There are two lists:

List A documents (unlimited right to rent)

A document from List A confirms an unlimited right to rent and means the landlord does not need to re-check during the tenancy. The most common:

A current UK passport.
A current Irish passport.
A UK birth certificate combined with a National Insurance number document.
A current EU/EEA passport with proof of indefinite leave to remain or settled status (typically a share code from the EU Settlement Scheme).
A UK Biometric Residence Permit indicating indefinite leave to remain.
A certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen.

List B documents (time-limited right to rent)

A List B document gives a time-limited right to rent and the landlord must re-check before the period expires. The most common:

A current passport with a current visa endorsement.
A Biometric Residence Permit indicating limited leave to enter or remain.
An immigration status document with a positive endorsement from the Home Office.
EU Settlement Scheme pre-settled status (for those who arrived before 31 December 2020).

How to carry out the check

In-person checks with original documents

The traditional check involves examining the original documents in the physical presence of the prospective occupier. Photocopies, scans, or photographs of documents are not sufficient — the landlord must see the originals.

The check requires the landlord to:

Examine the documents to ensure they appear genuine.
Compare any photograph in the documents to the person physically present.
Check any expiry dates and confirm the occupier's right to rent extends at least to the start of the tenancy.
Make a copy of each document examined — typically the photograph page of a passport, the front and back of a residence permit, both sides of a driving licence.
Record the date of the check.

Online checks (eVisas)

From 2025, an increasing share of right-to-rent checks are conducted online via the Home Office's right-to-rent online service. The applicant generates a "share code" through their UK Visas and Immigration account and provides it to the landlord (with the applicant's date of birth). The landlord enters the share code on the gov.uk service and confirms the check.

Online checks satisfy the statutory obligation in full and are quicker than physical document checks. From 2025 the Home Office is moving toward an "eVisa-only" system for new immigration grants — physical Biometric Residence Permits are being phased out in favour of digital records. Landlords increasingly need to be familiar with the online check route.

Video checks during the COVID period

A temporary concession during the COVID pandemic allowed checks to be conducted via video call. This concession ended in 2024. Right-to-rent checks now require either physical examination of original documents or use of the online service — video calls without one of these elements do not satisfy the statutory requirement.

Re-checks for time-limited rights to rent

Where a List B document gives a time-limited right to rent, the landlord must re-check the occupier's status before the right expires. Re-checks involve the same procedure as the initial check (or use of the online service).

If the right to rent has lapsed and the occupier no longer has a right to rent in the UK, the landlord must:

Notify the Home Office.
Make reasonable efforts to terminate the occupation.

A landlord who continues to let to an occupier without a right to rent after the time-limited period has expired commits an offence — even if the original check was correctly carried out. The statutory excuse only protects landlords who continue to comply with their re-check obligations.

Penalties for non-compliance

The civil penalty regime tightened substantially in 2024:

First offence: civil penalty up to £5,000 per occupier (up from £80-£500 previously).
Repeat offence: civil penalty up to £10,000 per occupier (up from £500-£3,000 previously).
Criminal prosecution remains available for serious or repeat breaches, with potential custodial sentences and unlimited fines.

Per occupier, not per property. A landlord who lets a five-bedroom HMO to five sharers without right-to-rent checks faces civil penalty exposure of £25,000 (first offence) or £50,000 (repeat offence). The regime has teeth.

In addition to civil penalty exposure:

A right-to-rent failure is taken into account in fit-and-proper-person assessments for HMO and selective licensing applications.
A landlord with right-to-rent breaches may have insurance claims affected.
The Home Office maintains records that follow the landlord across portfolios and can be cross-referenced for future enforcement.

Discrimination concerns

The right-to-rent regime has been controversial because of its potential to cause discrimination. A landlord who applies the regime over-cautiously — for example, refusing to let to anyone without a UK passport, or treating non-UK applicants more skeptically — may breach the Equality Act 2010's protections on race and nationality.

The High Court in 2019 declared aspects of the regime unlawful as causing race discrimination, but the Court of Appeal subsequently overturned the declaration. The regime continues to operate. Government guidance addresses the tension explicitly: landlords must apply the regime even-handedly, must not refuse all non-UK applicants on principle, and must accept the prescribed documents from any applicant who provides them.

Practical guidance:

Apply the same documentation requirements to every applicant regardless of nationality or appearance.
Accept any of the prescribed documents — do not require a UK passport when other documents would suffice.
Document selection criteria objectively and apply consistently.
If in doubt about an applicant's status, use the online check service or contact the Home Office Landlord Checking Service for guidance — do not refuse the application without confirmation.

Right to rent and the Renters' Rights Act 2025

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 did not affect the right-to-rent regime directly. The regime continues unchanged — every adult occupier must be checked before the tenancy starts, in the same way as before 1 May 2026.

Indirectly, the Act has reinforced the regime's importance:

Right-to-rent breaches are taken into account in PRS Database registration (when the database rolls out from late 2026).
Right-to-rent breaches are taken into account in fit-and-proper-person assessments for HMO licensing — increasingly common after the wider compliance push that has accompanied the Act.
The expanded civil penalty regime under the Act runs alongside the right-to-rent civil penalty regime — landlords with multiple compliance failures can attract penalties under several regimes from a single set of facts.

Operational best practice

A landlord operating professionally on right to rent:

1. Carries out checks before every tenancy starts. The check must be in place before any adult occupier takes occupation. Build it into the standard pre-tenancy workflow alongside referencing and tenancy agreement signing.

2. Uses the online service where possible. Faster, simpler, and produces an audit trail the Home Office can verify directly.

3. Maintains a portfolio-wide register of time-limited rights to rent. Each property, each occupier, each expiry date. Re-check before the expiry date.

4. Keeps copies for the duration of the tenancy + 1 year. Document copies, dates of checks, and (for online checks) the share code reference number. The records are the statutory excuse.

5. Briefs any letting agent. Where an agent acts for the landlord, the agent typically carries out the check — but the landlord remains liable for any failure. Verify the agent's process and obtain copies of the documentation.