What are ‘Right to Rent’ checks?

Right to rent checks are only needed in England as the regulations have not been introduced in Wales (or indeed Scotland or Northern Ireland).

Now is a good idea to do the check, as you need to do it in the presence of the applicant with the original forms in front of you.  Note that you will need to keep a copy so if you do not have a copier or scanner, make sure you ask them to bring a copy with them.

There is a lot of information about this on the Gov.uk website here.  But here are a few tips for you:

Your object is to protect your position

Bear in mind, that it is not your job to deal with illegal immigrants.  That is the job of the Home Office.  Your job is just to make sure that you have complied with the rules and can prove this if asked.  So you don’t get fined.

This means that you should:

• keep a record of the check and its result
• the date it was done,
• the name of the person doing the check
• details of questions asked and answers given (particularly if there are any suspicious circumstances) and
• copies of the ID documents provided to you

You need to keep your records and the copy document provided to you for at least two years, but ideally (if longer) until at least one year after the lodger has left.

You need to follow the online government guidance

We are not putting detailed guidance on the forms you need to check as these may change from time to time.

It is best that you visit the government guidance pages and follow the online instructions.

You will find a collection of guidance articles here.

You need to watch out for suspicious circumstances

Although the government have said that they do not expect landlords to be forgery experts, they do expect you to be sensible and take proper precautions. For example

• Check that there are no discrepancies in dates on the paperwork provided
• Make sure that the appearance of the person matches their ID photograph
• Be extra careful where documents are in poor condition as this may be an attempt to disguise the fact that they are forged

If you suspect that the applicant may not have a right to rent in the UK, or if there is anything suspicious about them, you should rent your room to someone else.  Bearing in mind that you could be fined a substantial sum of money.

Penalties for non-compliance

If the Home Office find that you have let your room to someone without the right to rent in the UK, you can be fined if you cannot prove that you carried out the right to rent check.

You can also be prosecuted and sent to prison, but this is most unlikely for lodger landlords.

The fine for renting to lodgers without a right to rent in a private household is cheaper than the penalties for renting to illegal tenants.  At the time of writing, it is £80 for the first offence (as opposed to £1,000 for landlords renting to tenants).  If you are fined again the fine will go up to £500 (as opposed to £3,000).

However, these fines are due to go up at the start of 2024 from £80 to £5,000 and from £1,000 (for a repeat offence) to £10,000.  In view of this, it is really important that these rules are complied with and that you keep a record of your right to rent check and the ID documents produced to you.

We strongly recommend that you purchase our right-to-rent checklist to help with this.

Online help

There is a useful online step-by-step guide provided by the Home Office, which you can follow here.