What do Right to Rent Checks Involve?

Your landlord or leasing agent will ask you to show your immigration documents or passport when you start or renew your lease. This is called a “right to rent check” and was introduced by the Home Office with the aim of making it harder for people to live and work illegally in England. Leases in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not subject to right-to-rent checks. Certified Identity Service Providers (IDSP) offer the ability to conveniently write checks, but not all agents will be able to offer checks with the right to rent through an IDSP (even for this restricted group).

You can see a list of IDPs on GOV, United Kingdom. The right to rent check involves verifying the immigration status of a potential tenant and making sure they have the legal right to live in the UK. The acceptable documents a tenant can use to prove their identity and their right to rent depend on their nationality. If you are trying to take out a lease from abroad, landlords can agree to the lease, in principle, after checking your identity on arrival. The responsibility for carrying out the checks lies with the landlords and you must carry them out for all tenants over the age of 18, regardless of whether they are in the lease or not.

At this point in the process, the prospective tenant will have paid a deposit to remove the property from the rental market, while checks are being processed; a deposit that would normally be refunded if it did not meet the landlord's criteria or would go towards the deposit, should it be approved. If you can't prove your right to rent, there's a chance you won't be able to rent the property you've chosen. The report will also show you what documents your tenant used to generate the participation code and when they were checked by the Ministry of the Interior. Then, they can allow the remaining legal tenants to continue their tenancy by reassigning it to one or more remaining adult occupants who have the right to rent. The verification must be done for all adult tenants to whom you rent the property and repeat it at the appropriate time, for example, when the tenant's current visa expires. In these situations, you can still write the checks for the right to rent manually using the Landlord Verification Service (LCS).

This means that it's your responsibility to collect rent, organize property repairs, and process rent entitlement checks, and it's not the primary landlord's responsibility, the name given to the primary landlord in the event of a sublease. To manually verify a tenant's right to rent, you need to request original documents (not copies) from each of your tenants over 18 years old showing that they have the right to rent in the UK.