04 Feb Are You Complying With the Right to Work Regime?
Preventing illegal working continues to be high on the government’s agenda and you, as employers, have a big role to play in this by making sure you are doing right to work checks on all your staff properly, not just the ones that you believe might not be UK or Irish nationals.
Despite that, many employers are still either not doing them properly or not doing them at all. This is often particularly the case for businesses who have a transient, casual workforce where staff come and go.
If you do them properly, at the right time and in the right way, then even if you are found to have employed an illegal worker (that is someone who does not have the right to work in the UK) you should have a “statutory excuse” meaning no penalties from the Home Office (hopefully!).
If you don’t have that statutory excuse, then the penalties can be devastating for your business, and you, including fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker and even a jail sentence in the worst case!
So, getting that statutory excuse in place is critical.
There are various ways of doing the checks but the rules around specifics and timings are rigid and so even if you have done the check, if you haven’t done it in the right way or at the right time, you may still be at risk.
At BRIDGE, we can:
- Help you to understand your obligations here.
- Work with you to put in place a robust system to make sure checks are being done compliantly, and that you are tracking cases where follow on checks are needed too, thus making sure you have that statutory excuse in place for each worker.
- Help you to audit existing systems to make sure they are as robust as they need to be and that checks are being properly carried out and recorded, and time limited permissions kept on top of; and
- Discuss options with you if it turns out you have employed someone illegally and how to put it right.
We recommend that you check that you have got right to work checks in place for all workers as this is an area you really can’t afford to get wrong.
Liability is strict and mitigating factors are only taken into account in very specific circumstances (essentially when you self-report a breach to the Home Office) so getting on top of this is an exercise worth doing!
If you need any help on any of this, please contact the team on enquiries@bridgehr.co.uk.
