Right to rent: the check that has to happen before the tenancy starts

A right to rent check is the landlord’s verification that everyone aged 18 or over who will occupy a property as their only or main home in England has permission to be in the country. Done properly and before the tenancy begins, it gives the landlord a statutory excuse against a civil penalty if an occupier later turns out not to have that permission.

The scope catches people out more than the mechanics do. The obligation covers every adult occupier, not only the person named on the agreement, and it applies to lodgers and to sub-lets. A check done on the tenant while an adult family member moves in unchecked leaves the excuse incomplete.

The three ways a right to rent check is done

• Manual check: original acceptable documents, seen with the person present — in person or by live video call while you hold the originals — then copied and dated.
• Identity document validation technology through a certified provider, for holders of eligible passports.
• Online check using a share code supplied by the occupier plus their date of birth, with the landlord generating and retaining the result themselves.

As with employment checks, a share code forwarded by the tenant is the input, not the check. The landlord must run it, see the profile and photograph, and keep the result — a screenshot from the tenant proves nothing about who looked.

What to record, and when to look again

1. Carry out the check before the tenancy agreement grants a right to occupy.
2. Check every adult occupier, and record who was checked and by whom.
3. Keep copies in an unalterable format with the date of the check clear, for the tenancy and for a year afterwards.
4. Where permission is time-limited, diary a follow-up check before it expires, and record the outcome.
5. Report to the Home Office as required where a follow-up check shows a person no longer has permission — that step is what preserves the excuse.
6. Apply the same process to every tenant, and keep the evidence that you did.

Checking only people who look or sound foreign is unlawful discrimination and also weakens the excuse, which depends on a consistent process. Check everyone the same way, and let the file show it. The right to rent scheme applies in England; landlords elsewhere in the UK should check their own position rather than assume the same duty. The mechanics mirror the employment right to work check, and the same diary discipline applies.

Where landlords lose the excuse

Three patterns recur: the check is done after the tenant moves in; only the lead tenant is checked; and the follow-up date for time-limited permission passes unnoticed because nobody attached a reminder to the file when the check was made.

The third is the same failure mode as employment right to work checks, and it has the same fix — the reminder belongs on the record at the moment the check is made, not in someone’s memory of when the visa runs out.

Ettex Records keeps the check, the evidence and the follow-up date as one item per occupier, so the obligation is a dated task rather than a folder someone has to remember to reopen. Whether a document is acceptable and what the current scheme requires are questions for the official guidance, which changes — and this is a prompt to read it, not a substitute for it.