On 1 October 2026 the UK's Right to Work Scheme stops being an employer-only rule. From that date a business that engages people on a worker's contract, takes on individual sub-contractors or runs an online matching service is treated as their employer for right to work purposes, and can be fined up to £45,000 per person for getting it wrong. The Home Office named courier services and food delivery among the sectors it had in mind.
For a delivery operator this closes a gap that has existed since the scheme began: the self-employed courier who signs up through an app, or arrives through a sub-contractor, was never covered by the statutory duty, however sensible checking them was. This guide sets out what changes, who is now in scope, what a compliant check looks like, what happens to drivers you already work with, and what to have in place before 1 October. It draws on the Home Office's draft employer's guide dated 11 September 2026, which comes into force on that date; the guide is still marked draft, so check the final version when it publishes. None of this is legal advice.
What changes on 1 October 2026
Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 amends the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, the law behind right to work checks, so that "employer" no longer means only someone with employees. From 1 October 2026 the draft guide defines an employer as a person who employs an individual under a contract of employment, under a worker's contract, as an individual sub-contractor, or when operating as an online matching service.
Three things follow:
- The duty to check now attaches to those arrangements, before the work starts.
- Civil penalty liability applies to them, for engagements commencing on or after 1 October 2026.
- Liability can extend up a contracting chain and to substitutes, under a new set of "extended liability" rules.
What does not change is the check itself. The three prescribed methods, the share code, the follow-up rules and the penalty amounts are the same as for employees. What changes is who has to do it.
Who is now an employer: the three new categories
The draft guide defines each of the new categories, and the definitions decide whether a delivery business is caught.
A worker's contract is "a contract (other than a contract of service or apprenticeship) under which an individual undertakes to perform work or services personally for another person". That is the limb (b) worker of employment law: not an employee, but personally doing the work.
An individual sub-contractor is "an individual who has entered into a contract with a person to provide work or services, in circumstances where that other person has entered into a contract with a third party to provide, or arrange for the provision of, the work or services". In delivery terms: the self-employed driver a courier company engages to fulfil its contract with a retailer.
An online matching service is "a person who, in the course of a business, keeps a register of service providers for the purpose of matching them with potential clients or customers". The guide's Example 3 removes any doubt about whether that means delivery apps: "An individual signs up to work through a delivery platform. The individual logs into an app when they want to work, accepts delivery requests and gets paid for each delivery they complete. The delivery platform is the individual's employer for the purposes of the Right to Work Scheme."
Who is outside the scheme. The guide says it "does not apply to individuals who are operating an independent business either in their own name or through their own company and who contract directly with clients or customers to provide goods or services". Its example is a self-employed plumber who advertises to the public. A courier with their own customers and their own trading name is that plumber. A courier who gets all their work through your app or your sub-contract is not.
Does this apply to my business?
| Your situation | In scope from 1 October 2026? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You engage self-employed drivers directly to fulfil your delivery contracts | Yes | They are individual sub-contractors, or on a worker's contract if they must do the work personally |
| You run an app or platform that offers jobs to a pool of couriers | Yes | You are an online matching service, and the guide's own example names delivery platforms |
| You use a sub-contractor company whose drivers deliver under your contract | Yes, through extended liability | The sub-contractor is the employer; you can also be liable unless your contract meets the prescribed requirements |
| Your drivers may send a substitute in their place | Yes, for the substitute too | The guide's Example 9 treats the platform as the substitute's employer as well |
| You employ drivers on PAYE | Already in scope | Nothing changes except the guidance version |
| You buy delivery services from another company for your own internal use | No | The guide excludes a client or end-user purchasing services for its own operations |
| A courier with their own trading business and own customers occasionally works for you | Probably not | The independent-business exclusion, but the test is the reality of the arrangement, not the label |
The last row is the trap. Calling a driver "self-employed" in the contract does not take them out of scope if, in practice, they work through your platform or your sub-contract and have no business of their own.
Extended liability: the sub-contractor's driver and the substitute
This is the part of the change written for delivery, and it is the part most operators will find new.
The guide applies extended liability where "a person is under a contract to provide work or services to a third party and enters into a contract with another employer who employs worker(s) to carry out all or part of the work or services required to fulfil that contract". Read that against a typical last-mile chain: a retailer contracts a carrier, the carrier contracts a courier company, the courier company engages drivers. If one of those drivers has no right to work, the courier company that engaged them is the employer. Under extended liability, the carrier above it can also face a penalty, and keeps its statutory excuse only where it "has complied with prescribed requirements in relation to the relevant contractual arrangements" with the courier company.
The guide does not spell those requirements out in the extracts we have read; it points to its section 3. In practice they concern what your contract with the sub-contractor obliges it to do about checks and what evidence you obtain. Read that section with whoever drafts your sub-contracts, and do it before 1 October, because the extended liability rules bite on contracts entered into on or after that date.
Substitution gets the same treatment. Example 9 describes a food delivery courier who is permitted to substitute and routinely asks a friend to complete deliveries. The guide's conclusion: "the food delivery platform may be treated as the employer of the individual personally carrying out the work or services, including any substitute". The substitution right that kept Deliveroo's riders outside worker status in the Supreme Court in November 2023 now brings the substitute inside the Right to Work Scheme. If your model allows substitutes, your process has to be able to check them.
What a compliant check is
The methods are unchanged from the employee regime, and our courier background checks guide covers the mechanics. The points that matter for the new categories:
- Before the work starts. The statutory excuse depends on the check being done "before the worker commences employment", which for a platform means before the first job is accepted, not after onboarding is complete.
- Three prescribed methods. A manual check of original documents from the acceptable lists; the Home Office online service, where the individual gives you a nine-character share code beginning with W together with their date of birth; or a check through a certified Right to Work digital verification service provider, which is permitted for holders of valid British or Irish passports. From 1 October a digital provider has to be certified and registered against the DVS trust framework for the check to count.
- You cannot choose the method for them. Anyone with an eVisa must be checked online. British and Irish citizens are checked manually or digitally. The guide says employers "cannot mandate the method" and must give a reasonable opportunity to prove the right to work, and it warns against treating candidates differently by nationality or appearance.
- Follow-up checks for time-limited permission. Where the right to work carries an expiry date, you keep your excuse only by re-checking on or before it. Where someone has an outstanding, in-time application, the Employer Checking Service gives a six-month excuse and aims to respond within five working days.
- Record it. The check type, the date, the outcome, and the follow-up date if there is one. A check you cannot evidence is a check you did not do.
Drivers you already work with
The guide is explicit that the new categories are not retrospective. A civil penalty for a worker's contract, an individual sub-contractor or an online matching service "may only be imposed where the employment commenced on or after 1 October 2026", and the extended liability requirements apply to contractual arrangements "entered into on or after 1 October 2026".
So a courier who has been delivering for you since June is outside the new penalty regime for as long as that engagement continues. Three cautions:
- A new engagement is a new engagement. A driver who leaves and comes back, or moves from one sub-contractor to another, starts a new arrangement on the later date.
- Voluntary checks must be even-handed. The guide says that where a business chooses to check existing workers retrospectively it "must do so in a non-discriminatory manner". Check the whole fleet or check nobody; never a subset picked on suspicion.
- Time-limited permission still expires. A follow-up check is due on expiry regardless of when the engagement began.
Most operators will choose to bring the whole fleet up to the same standard over the autumn, because a fleet with two regimes running side by side is harder to audit than one. If you do, treat it as a rolling exercise with a date for everyone, not a filter.
The penalty, and the excuse that beats it
The civil penalty is up to £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and up to £60,000 per worker for a repeat within three years, under the code of practice on preventing illegal working in force since 13 February 2024. The code allows reductions where the business reported the suspected illegal working itself and where it actively cooperated with the investigation. Sponsors of skilled worker visas also risk their licence.
The number to hold onto is not the fine but the defence. A compliant check, done before work starts and recorded, gives you a statutory excuse against the penalty for that worker, even if the document later turns out to be false. The penalty is for not checking, not for being deceived by a good forgery you checked properly. For a fleet of forty self-employed drivers, the arithmetic is not close.
What to have in place before 1 October
- Map who works for you and how. Employees, workers, self-employed drivers you engage directly, drivers arriving through sub-contractors, and anyone who may substitute. The first two rows of the table above are yours to check; the third is yours to contract for.
- Move the check to the front of onboarding. For a platform or an app, "before the first job", not "within the first week". If your sign-up flow lets a courier accept work before the check completes, that order has to change.
- Build for all three methods. A share code path for eVisa holders, a manual or certified digital path for British and Irish passports, and a route to the Employer Checking Service for the cases in between. Confirm any digital provider you use will be certified and registered under the DVS trust framework from 1 October.
- Fix the sub-contracts. Read section 3 of the draft guide on the prescribed contractual requirements with your legal adviser and amend your sub-contractor agreements before you next sign or renew one.
- Decide your substitution policy. Either stop permitting substitutes or build a way to check them before they deliver. There is no third option under Example 9.
- Set follow-up dates. Every time-limited permission in the fleet needs a re-check date in a system someone reads, not a spreadsheet someone owns.
- Decide what to do about existing drivers. Nothing is required. If you check, check everyone on the same footing and on the same timetable.
Where this sits in the wider hiring process, from the advert to the first shift, is in our guide to recruiting delivery drivers, and how the record then stays current alongside licences and insurance is in the delivery driver compliance guide. Right to work is one of the ten evidence categories Service Club ® Compliance collects, verifies and renews for an operation, with the follow-up date tracked rather than remembered.
Frequently asked questions
Do right to work checks apply to self-employed couriers from October 2026?
Yes, for engagements that start on or after 1 October 2026. Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 extends the Right to Work Scheme from employees to people engaged on a worker's contract, individual sub-contractors and people supplied through an online matching service. The Home Office's draft employer's guide gives a delivery platform as its example: someone who logs into an app, accepts deliveries and is paid per drop is now that platform's employee for the purposes of the scheme. The only self-employed people outside it are those running an independent business and contracting directly with their own customers.
Do I need to re-check drivers I already work with?
No. A civil penalty for the new categories can only be imposed where the engagement commenced on or after 1 October 2026, and the extended liability rules apply to contracts entered into on or after that date. Existing arrangements are not caught retrospectively. If you choose to check existing drivers anyway, which many operators will, the guide says you must do it in a non-discriminatory way: check everyone in the same position, not the people whose names or accents make you wonder.
What is an online matching service under the new rules?
The draft guide defines it as a person who, in the course of a business, keeps a register of service providers for the purpose of matching them with potential clients or customers. A delivery app that holds a pool of couriers and offers them jobs fits that definition, and the guide's own example says the platform is the courier's employer for right to work purposes. A courier company that simply buys delivery from another company for its own use is not one.
Who is liable if a sub-contractor's driver has no right to work?
Potentially both of you. The sub-contractor who engaged the driver is the employer and must have done the check. Under the new extended liability rules, the business further up the chain that contracted the sub-contractor can also face a civil penalty, and keeps its statutory excuse only by meeting the prescribed requirements in its contractual arrangements with that sub-contractor. The same applies to a platform whose courier sends a substitute: the platform can be treated as the substitute's employer too.
Can I insist that a driver gives me a share code?
No. The guide says employers cannot mandate the method by which an individual proves their right to work and must give a reasonable opportunity to do so. Someone with an eVisa will use the online service and give you a share code; a British or Irish citizen shows a passport for a manual check or goes through a certified digital verification service. What you can insist on is that the check is complete before the first shift, and that you keep a dated record of it.
What is the penalty for not checking?
Up to £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and up to £60,000 per worker for a repeat within three years, under the code of practice that took effect on 13 February 2024. The code allows reductions where the business reported the suspected illegal working itself and cooperated with the investigation. A compliant check carried out before work starts gives a statutory excuse, which is a complete defence, so the check is what protects you rather than the size of the fine.
The check was always worth doing. Now it is required
Operators who already checked every driver, employed or not, have one job before 1 October: make sure the check happens before the first delivery and that a sub-contractor's drivers and any substitutes are covered by contract. Operators who relied on the self-employed label have a larger one, and nine days to start it. If you want the right to work record kept alongside the licence, the insurance and the follow-up dates in one place, Service Club Compliance is built for that, or get in touch and tell us how your drivers are engaged.