Right to Rent Checks for Letting Agents 2026: The Complete Guide

What Right to Rent is, in one paragraph

Right to Rent is the legal duty to check that every adult who will live in a rented property has the immigration status to do so, before the tenancy starts. It was introduced by the Immigration Act 2014 and has applied across England since 1 February 2016. It applies to England only — there is no equivalent duty in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. For letting agents it is one of the most frequently performed compliance tasks of all — you do it for every new tenancy — and, unlike a gas safety certificate, the consequences of getting it wrong land on a person, not a property: civil penalties per occupier, and a criminal offence at the serious end.

This guide is written for letting agents: who is liable, who you have to check, the three valid methods in 2026, follow-up checks, the statutory excuse that protects you, how long to keep records, and the penalties. We make Proplio, compliance software for letting agents, so we have a view — but the law here is the law, and most of this guide is just the rules.

Who is liable: landlord or agent?

By default the landlord carries the Right to Rent duty. But the rules expressly allow a letting agent to take on that responsibility in writing. Once an agent has agreed in writing to carry out Right to Rent checks, the agent — not the landlord — is liable for any civil penalty arising from a missed or defective check.

The practical points for agents:

• Put it in the management agreement. "The Agent will carry out Right to Rent checks in respect of the Property" — or words to that effect. Doing the checks in practice while the contract is silent is the worst of both worlds: you do the work and the question of who is liable is left murky.
• It is all-or-nothing per property. You cannot do the initial check and leave the follow-up to the landlord. If you have accepted responsibility, the follow-up checks are yours too.
• Let-only versus managed matters. On a let-only instruction where you find the tenant but the landlord manages, be explicit about whether the initial check sits with you and whether any follow-up reverts to the landlord. Ambiguity here is where penalties get argued about.

Who you have to check

You must check every person aged 18 or over who will occupy the property as their only or main home — regardless of whether they are named on the tenancy agreement.

That means:

• The lead tenant and their adult partner
• Any adult children living there
• Any other permitted adult occupiers

You do not need to check:

• Anyone under 18 at the start of the tenancy
• Short-term guests or visitors
• Occupiers of holiday lets, care homes, hostels, and certain other excluded accommodation

The single most expensive mistake agents make is checking only the person who signs the agreement. The civil penalty is per occupier without the right to rent, so a household of several adults multiplies the exposure. Check every adult, every time.

The three valid check methods in 2026

There are three ways to perform a compliant check in 2026. Which one you use depends on who the tenant is.

1. Home Office online check (share code)

This is now the standard route for anyone who holds a digital immigration status (an eVisa) and the only valid route for most people who are not British or Irish citizens. Physical immigration documents such as biometric residence permits are no longer the basis for a check.

How it works:

1. 1The tenant generates a share code on the Home Office "prove your right to rent" service and gives it to you, along with their date of birth.
2. 2You enter the share code and their date of birth on the landlord-checking service.
3. 3You see their right-to-rent status on screen, including whether it is time-limited.
4. 4You check that the photograph on the online profile reasonably matches the person taking the tenancy.

A share code is valid for 90 days from generation. If it has expired by the time you complete the check, the tenant generates a fresh one — codes are free and instant. You retain the online confirmation as your evidence.

2. Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT)

Since 6 April 2022, British and Irish citizens who hold a valid passport (or Irish passport card) can be checked digitally through a certified IDVT provider — a Home Office-certified Identification Document Validation Technology service that validates the document and matches it to the person. Providers in this space include the likes of Credas, Yoti, TrustID, and Onfido; the Home Office maintains the list of certified providers.

You keep the IDVT provider's report as your evidence. This route is optional — you can still do a manual document check for British and Irish citizens — but it is faster and removes the need to handle original documents in person.

3. Manual document check

The traditional method, still valid for British and Irish citizens and anyone whose status cannot be evidenced online:

1. 1Obtain original documents from the Home Office's published lists (see List A and List B below).
2. 2Check them in the presence of the holder — in person or over a live video call while you hold the originals.
3. 3Check the documents are genuine, that photos and dates of birth are consistent across documents and with the person, and that any time limits are noted.
4. 4Make and retain a clear copy, dated, and record the date you made the check.

List A versus List B — the distinction that drives follow-ups

• List A documents show a continuous right to rent — British/Irish passports, settled status, indefinite leave to remain. A check against List A means no follow-up check is ever required for that person.
• List B documents show a time-limited right to rent — a visa or status with an expiry date. A List B check gives you a statutory excuse only until the follow-up date.

Recording which list a check was based on is what tells you, months later, whether a follow-up is due. It is the single most useful thing to capture at the point of check.

Follow-up checks — where the statutory excuse quietly lapses

If you checked a List B (time-limited) document, you must carry out a follow-up check before the earlier of:

• 12 months after the initial check, or
• the date the person's permission to be in the UK expires.

If the follow-up confirms an ongoing right to rent, your excuse continues. If it shows the person no longer has the right to rent, you must report them to the Home Office — doing so is what preserves your statutory excuse. Quietly doing nothing does not.

This is the failure mode that catches careful agents. The initial check was perfect, the tenant moved in, everyone moved on — and nothing in the day-to-day prompts the diary eleven months later. The first check protects you; the missing second check is where the excuse lapses without anyone noticing. A tracked follow-up date, with a reminder firing weeks ahead, is the whole defence.

The statutory excuse — the point of the entire scheme

A correctly performed check before the tenancy begins gives you a statutory excuse: if it later turns out the tenant had no right to rent, you are protected from the civil penalty because you did everything the scheme requires. Lose or skip the check and you lose the excuse.

The excuse depends on three things being true:

1. 1The check was done before the tenancy started (and follow-ups done on time).
2. 2It was done using one of the valid methods for that person.
3. 3You retained the evidence correctly.

Everything in this guide ultimately serves that excuse. The penalties below are what happens when it is missing.

Penalties for getting it wrong

The civil penalties were sharply increased on 22 January 2024:

These are per person, not per property. A household of four adults with no right to rent, on a repeat breach, is exposure north of £50,000.

Separately — and far more serious — knowingly letting to someone you know, or have reasonable cause to believe, has no right to rent is a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine. The civil penalty is for getting the check wrong; the criminal offence is for renting to someone you know should not be there.

Right to Rent is one of a stack of duties where the fines have teeth — see the full landlord and letting agent fines guide for how it sits alongside gas safety, EICR, and HMO penalties, and the UK letting agent compliance checklist for everything else that has to be tracked per property.

Record-keeping and data protection

Keep your evidence — the online check confirmation, the IDVT report, or dated copies of original documents — for the duration of the tenancy and at least one year after it ends.

Because these records contain identity data and immigration status, they are personal data under UK GDPR:

• Store them securely and access-controlled, not in an open shared drive or a personal inbox.
• Do not keep them longer than necessary — the tenancy plus one year is the benchmark; have a way to delete beyond that.
• Be able to produce them on request if the Home Office asks, which means knowing where every tenancy's evidence is without a search.

For a managing agent holding identity documents across dozens or hundreds of tenancies, this is a real data-protection footprint, not a filing afterthought.

Tracking Right to Rent across a portfolio

For a single property the diary works. Across a managed portfolio it does not, because Right to Rent has the two properties that defeat manual tracking at scale:

• It is per occupier, not per property — so the thing you are tracking is not a tidy list of addresses but a list of people, several per tenancy.
• The follow-up date is different for every time-limited tenant — driven by each person's individual visa expiry, not a fixed annual cycle.

That is exactly what compliance software is for. In Proplio, Right to Rent is one of the default compliance types: you record the check against the tenancy, mark whether it was a List A (no follow-up) or List B (follow-up due) check, set the follow-up date, and the reminder ladder fires at 90, 60, 30, 14, and 7 days before it. The portfolio dashboard colour-codes every property by status, so an approaching follow-up is visible on the screen the team starts the day on rather than buried in a tab nobody reopens. When a council or the Home Office asks for evidence, the per-property compliance pack assembles in one click.

If you are weighing how to track this alongside everything else, the compliance software comparison and the spreadsheet-versus-software guide cover the wider build-versus-buy picture.

Key takeaways

• Right to Rent applies to England only and must be done before the tenancy starts, for every adult occupier — not just the named tenant.
• A letting agent becomes liable instead of the landlord only if it accepts the duty in writing — get it in the management agreement.
• Three valid methods in 2026: online share-code check (the standard route for digital status and most non-British/Irish nationals), IDVT (British/Irish passport holders), and manual document checks. Share codes are valid 90 days.
• List A = continuous right, no follow-up. List B = time-limited right, follow-up before the earlier of 12 months or visa expiry. Missing the follow-up is the most common way the statutory excuse lapses.
• Civil penalties since 22 January 2024 are up to £10,000 per occupier first breach and £20,000 per occupier repeat — per person — plus a criminal offence of up to five years for knowingly letting to someone with no right to rent.
• Keep evidence securely for the tenancy plus one year, under UK GDPR, and track the check date, document list, and follow-up date per tenancy so the excuse never quietly lapses.

This article is for general guidance and applies to England only — Right to Rent does not operate in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. Check methods, document lists, and certified IDVT providers are set by the Home Office and change over time; always confirm the current rules in the Home Office Right to Rent guidance and code of practice, or with a qualified adviser, before relying on them.