New Right to Work Rules from 1 October 2026: What Employers Using Agency, Temp and Flexible Labour Need to Do Now

If your business relies on agency staff, temps, contractors or gig workers to keep things moving, a significant change to Right to Work law is heading your way — and August is the month to start getting ready for it.

Under section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, the legal duty to carry out Right to Work checks is set to be extended well beyond directly employed PAYE staff. From 1 October 2026 (the date the government is expected to bring the provisions into force), the checking duty is anticipated to cover agency workers, temporary staff, self-employed contractors, and people engaged through platforms and the wider gig economy. For sectors that lean heavily on flexible labour — logistics, warehousing, construction, hospitality and events — this is a meaningful shift in who you are responsible for checking.

Here is what employers using flexible and temporary labour need to understand now, and the practical steps worth taking over the next few weeks.

What is actually changing

At the moment, the statutory Right to Work regime is built around the employer–employee relationship. Run a compliant check on your direct PAYE hires and you establish a statutory excuse — a defence against a civil penalty if a worker later turns out to have no right to work. Crucially, that duty has not formally extended to the wider pool of people who work for a business without being on its payroll.

That is the gap the 2025 Act is designed to close. By widening the checking duty to cover agency, temporary, self-employed and platform workers, the legislation brings a large group of people who were previously outside the formal framework squarely inside it. In practice, it means a business can no longer assume that “they’re not our employee” removes the compliance question.

Why this matters: the cost of getting it wrong

Right to Work compliance is not an area where you want to be caught out. Civil penalties for illegal working currently run to as much as £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches, alongside the reputational damage and disruption that comes with an enforcement visit. Extend the checking duty to a much larger population of workers and the potential exposure rises accordingly — particularly for businesses that scale their workforce up and down through busy periods.

The businesses most affected are precisely those that value flexibility: a distribution centre bringing in seasonal pickers, a construction firm using subcontracted labour, an events company staffing up for a summer of activity. The flexibility is a genuine strength — but it now comes with a compliance layer that needs to be handled properly.

What employers should do in August

Because this is a runway period before the rules are expected to take effect, the most useful thing you can do now is get your house in order. A few practical priorities:

• Map who is actually working for you. Go beyond the payroll. List every category of person doing work in your business — agency, temp, self-employed, subcontracted, platform-based — and identify where you currently have no visibility over their Right to Work status.
• Tighten your onboarding. Make a compliant Right to Work check a non-negotiable gate before anyone starts, regardless of how they are engaged. Build it into the process so it cannot be skipped when things get busy.
• Review your suppliers. If you take workers from agencies or labour providers, ask how they carry out Right to Work checks and what evidence they retain. Your compliance is only as strong as the weakest link in your supply chain.
• Get familiar with digital checks. The Home Office’s online checking service and certified Identity Service Providers (IDSPs) are the backbone of modern compliance. If you are still relying on eyeballing physical documents, now is the time to modernise.
• Confirm the final detail. These provisions are still coming through as secondary legislation. Keep an eye on the final Home Office guidance before commencement, so your processes match the published rules rather than the expected shape of them.

How a compliant recruitment partner de-risks this

Here is the part that is genuinely good news for anyone using temporary labour. A reputable recruitment agency already runs Right to Work checks on every temporary worker it supplies — it is a core part of doing the job properly. When you engage temp and temp-to-perm staff through an established agency, that verification work is done before the worker ever sets foot on your site.

Using a well-run agency does not add a compliance burden to flexible staffing — it removes one. The checks are already built into how temporary workers are supplied.

That does not mean an employer can switch off entirely; you still need to understand your own obligations and keep your records straight. But partnering with an agency that takes compliance seriously means the heavy lifting on temporary workers is handled by people who do it every day. As the checking duty widens, that becomes a real advantage rather than a nice-to-have.

At Prism 7 Resourcing, Right to Work verification is a standard part of how we place temporary, temp-to-perm and permanent staff across Essex, Kent and the wider South East. If you are reviewing how your flexible workforce stacks up ahead of the expected October changes, we can help you think it through and supply staff who are already checked and ready to work.

This article is general information for employers and is not legal advice. The provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 are expected to take effect from 1 October 2026; always confirm the final Home Office guidance before updating your procedures. Reach us on hello@prism-7.co.uk or 01268 330129.