Right to Work

General orientation, not legal advice; requirements and penalties differ substantially by jurisdiction.

For teams turning right to work into a repeatable record, labour-cost tracking provides a useful operational reference for time, attendance and reporting workflows. It should be assessed alongside GOV.UK workplace guidance so the software choice remains grounded in site practice and applicable guidance.

Construction is among the sectors most exposed to illegal working enforcement, because the workforce is supplied, transient and several tiers deep.

Where the obligation sits

On the employer, in most regimes, which is the agency or the subcontractor rather than the site.

But enforcement in practice falls on the contractor with the site, through penalties, licensing consequences, and in some jurisdictions criminal exposure where knowledge or negligence is established.

And on public work, through the client, whose contract will make it your problem regardless of the statutory position.

Which means the site checks whether or not it strictly has to, and that decision should be made deliberately rather than inherited.

The check itself

Documents examined in the person's presence, against the person.

Validity confirmed — not just that a document exists but that it permits this work.

Some permissions are conditional: limited hours, specific sponsors, particular occupations. A document that permits study with limited work is not a document that permits full-time site work.

Recorded with the date of the check, and retained for the prescribed period — which in most regimes is a defined period after the person leaves rather than indefinitely.

Where it goes wrong

Assumed to have been done by the agency, which assumed the site did it.

Checked at enrolment and never again, when the permission has an expiry — which is the same failure pattern as competence cards and has the same fix.

Done for the person who was booked and not for the person who arrived, which is the substitution problem.

And applied inconsistently, which creates a discrimination exposure on top of the original one.

Consistency, specifically

The check applies to everybody, in the same way, regardless of appearance, name or accent.

A site checking some people more carefully than others has a second problem, and it is one that produces complaints and findings independently of whether anybody was working illegally.

Write the process, apply it to everybody, and record that you did.

Expiry

Permissions expire, and a person with time-limited leave is unverified the day after it ends.

Hold the expiry date alongside the competence expiry and treat it the same way: a forward list, enforcement at access.

This is the part most sites do not do, because the check is thought of as an event rather than a status.

When something is wrong

A document that does not check out is a matter for the employer, not a confrontation at the gate.

The site's action is to refuse access and notify the engaging company, with the reason recorded factually.

Not an accusation, not a detention, and not a decision about somebody's immigration status, which is nobody on site's to make.

Have the process written before it happens, because it will happen at a bad moment and improvisation here is expensive in several directions.

What to record

That a check was done, by whom, on what date, against which document type.

Expiry where applicable.

Not, in most regimes, an indefinite copy of everything — which is more personal data than the rule requires and creates its own obligation.

Check the local rule on whether copies must be taken or must not, because it differs and both errors are findable.

The measure

Proportion of the register with a recorded check and a date.

Permissions expiring within thirty days.

Refusals, with the reason category.

And whether the process was applied to the last twenty people enrolled without exception, which is the consistency test and takes ten minutes to run.