From 1 October 2026, the Right to Work rules are being extended beyond traditional employees to cover some other people providing work or services, including people working under worker contracts and certain individual subcontracting arrangements.
And before you start chasing the window cleaner down the car park asking to see his passport, this does not mean you need to Right to Work check every self-employed person who does some work for you.
But you might need to check some of them.
Confused? I don’t blame you.
This new change is designed to close a fairly obvious gap in the current rules.
Currently, employers know they need to carry out Right to Work checks on employees, while most clients also do the same for contracted and zero-hours staff.
Where things become murkier is when we come to the person everyone happily describes as “self-employed”.
Because self-employed isn’t always self-employed.
Take your local plumber – a one-man band who runs his own plumbing business, advertises his services, works for lots of different customers, and sends you an invoice for fixing the problem.
You do not need to carry out a Right to Work check – you’re simply a customer buying a service from an independent business.
In fact, this is pretty much the example the Home Office itself uses in the new guidance.
Now let’s look at Dave – the guy you’re bringing in to work as a chef, two days a week.
Dave’s going to come in every Monday and Wednesday, personally make some meals, cater some events and invoice you at the end of every month.
He might call himself self-employed, but first, we need to have a closer look at Dave.
From 1 October, simply calling somebody “self-employed” and asking them to send you an invoice won’t necessarily put them outside the Right to Work scheme.
The key question is this:
Are you genuinely buying a service from somebody running their own independent business?
Or are you really engaging that particular individual personally to carry out work for your Club?
That distinction matters, and your responsibilities lie within the answer
Now, to make it a little more specific – you appoint a new self-employed Teaching Pro from 1 October.
They teach at your Club five days a week, have an agreement directly with the Club, personally carry out the work and can’t just send somebody else along to the job instead.
They might describe themselves as self-employed, and they might invoice you every month.
Once again, that does not automatically mean they fall outside the Right to Work scheme.
You need to look at the arrangement properly and decide if the Club is genuinely a customer of an independent coaching business, or whether you’re actually engaging that individual personally to provide the work.
Compare that with a Head Pro who genuinely runs their own coaching and retail business, advertises to the public, has their own customers, employs staff and operates independently of the Club.
Both might describe themselves as “self-employed”. Both might send you an invoice.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Right to Work rules treat them in the same way.
What matters is the reality of the arrangement, not the label on the agreement.
Oh, and one more thing: these new provisions apply to relevant engagements starting on or after 1 October 2026.
So you don’t suddenly need to spend 1 October trawling through every longstanding contractor the Club has ever used and demanding their passport.
But when you engage someone from 1 October onwards, you need to think a little more carefully about what the arrangement is.
So, the simple rule of thumb is:
- Buying a service from a genuine independent business? Generally, no Right to Work check.
- Engaging an individual personally to work? Stop and check whether the new rules apply.
And if they do, please remember that a Right to Work check might be more than photocopying a passport — depending upon the individual’s status, the check may be carried out using the Home Office online service and a share code.
And actually, that second category probably deserves looking at anyway.
Because if Dave works for you every Monday and Wednesday, does whatever you tell him to do, cannot send anybody else in his place and his entire “business” consists of sending you an invoice once a month…
…his Right to Work might not be the only legal issue we need to talk about 😉!
