Right to Rent Changes From 1 October: What's Different, and What Isn't

Right to Rent is an England-only scheme. Before a tenancy starts, you have to confirm that every adult who'll live in the property as their main home has the legal right to rent in the UK. Not just the lead tenant. Everyone aged 18 or over.

Miss it and the penalties are real. Since 13 February 2024, the civil penalty for letting to someone without the right to rent is up to £5,000 per lodger or £10,000 per occupier for a first breach, rising to £10,000 per lodger or £20,000 per occupier for a repeat breach (code of practice, gov.uk). Knowingly renting to someone without the right can also be a criminal offence carrying a prison sentence.

The short version

From 1 October 2026, an updated code of practice for Right to Rent checks comes into force. If you've heard about it and aren't sure whether it means more work for you, here's the direct answer: for most landlords, it changes nothing at all. If you checked a British or Irish passport, or a tenant with settled status, you're done, for good, with no new action to take, until your next tenancy.

The change is real, but it's narrow. It sharpens the timing rules for the one group of tenants whose right to rent is genuinely time-limited, tightens how you have to keep the record of a manual check, and updates the guidance on avoiding discrimination when you check digitally. This guide walks through exactly what's changing, who it actually affects, and how to run a check that stands up months or years later, whichever group your tenant falls into.

Read the next section first. It decides whether anything else here changes your next check.

What's actually changing on 1 October 2026

The Home Office has issued the 7th version of the Right to Rent landlords' code of practice, due to come into force on 1 October 2026 via The Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/700). Three things are changing:

1. The follow-up timing rule for time-limited checks got sharper.
2. The record you keep for a manual check now has specific format and retention rules.
3. The code on avoiding discrimination was updated to cover digital checks and eVisas by name.

Nothing else in the scheme moved. The duty to check every adult occupier, the civil penalties, and the criminal offence are all exactly as they were.

What to do: work out which of the two groups below you're actually in.

If you checked a British or Irish passport, or confirmed settled status: nothing changes

A British or Irish passport, or confirmed settled or no-time-limit status, gives you a continuous statutory excuse. It covers the whole tenancy and never needs a follow-up check, only the initial one. That's true today and the new code confirms it stays true after 1 October 2026. Nationality removes the follow-up, not the initial check itself. You still have to check every adult occupier once, at the start of the tenancy.

What to do: if every adult on your tenancy has an unlimited right to rent, confirm your original check was done and recorded properly. Nothing in the 1 October changes adds a task to your list.

If the right to rent is time-limited, the follow-up rule just got sharper

Everything in this section applies only where the right to rent is genuinely time-limited, for example an EU citizen with pre-settled status, or any other visa or permission with an end date.

Two timing rules apply. The first check has to fall within the 28 days before the tenancy starts, and it's good practice to run every check in that same window for any new tenancy, whichever group your tenant falls into. A check done too early doesn't count. Then you carry out a follow-up check before your statutory excuse runs out.

Under the code of practice in force from 1 October 2026, a time-limited excuse now lasts until the latest of these three dates:

1. One year from the date you checked.
2. The date their permission to stay in the UK expires.
3. The expiry date of the document or online result you checked.

A follow-up check before that date keeps the excuse going. Miss it and you can drift out of compliance without doing anything.

What to do: for a time-limited visa, record the dates from every check, work out which of the three dates comes last, and set a reminder to re-check before it.

The new retention rule for a manual check

The same 1 October 2026 code adds a specific record-keeping duty for a manual document check: you have to keep the evidence in a format that can't be edited, retained for the length of the tenancy plus one year. A phone photo stored on your camera roll, where you can crop or overwrite it, doesn't meet that bar on its own. The original, unaltered copy should be stored somewhere it can't be altered.

What to do: keep a dated, unalterable copy of every manual check result, wherever you store it, for the tenancy plus one year.

Why a good-looking document isn't proof any more

Here's where the mechanism matters. A prospective tenant can send you a photo of their passport and a reference from their last landlord that both look perfect. In 2026, "looks perfect" tells you almost nothing: AI tools can now generate convincing fakes that pass a naked-eye check.

A manual check only gives you legal protection if the forgery isn't something you could reasonably be expected to spot. AI-generated fakes are built precisely to clear that bar, which is exactly where they leave you exposed.

The fix isn't to look harder. It's to use a check that doesn't depend on looking at all.

What to do: treat any document sent as a photo or PDF as unverified until you've confirmed it through one of the routes below.

The 3 ways to run a check, and which one defeats a fake

Gov.uk sets out 3 ways to check (how to check, gov.uk):

1. Online share-code check. If the tenant has an eVisa, a biometric residence permit or settled or pre-settled status, they give you a share code and their date of birth. You enter both on the Home Office site and see their status confirmed against official records. A forged document can't produce a valid share code.

2. Digital Verification Service (DVS). For British and Irish citizens, who can't get a share code, an officially registered identity service provider checks their passport digitally. This verifies the document rather than leaving it to your eye.

3. Manual document check. Inspect the original with the person present, in person or on a live video call, for example a British passport as an alternative to DVS. Keep a clear, unalterable photo as your record, dated to when the check actually happened, not a later moment like move-in day. Still valid, but the weakest against a sophisticated fake, so keep it for cases where the digital routes don't apply.

If a tenant has no acceptable documents or share code, you can request a Home Office landlord checking service check, which returns a result within 2 working days. You'll need the tenant's Home Office reference number, and a positive result gives you a statutory excuse for 12 months.

What to do: default to the online share-code check or DVS. Reserve the manual check for when neither is possible, and always verify the original with the person present, in person or on a live video call, before you rely on any photo. Never accept a photo sent to you as the check itself.

The human checks a fake ID can't pass

Run every check that follows the same way for every applicant. There's a Home Office code of practice on avoiding discrimination in Right to Rent checks, updated from 1 October 2026 to cover digital checks and eVisas specifically. Applying it evenly, never based on someone's name, accent or where they say they're from, is both the law and the right way to do it.

A verified check confirms someone has the right to rent. It doesn't, on its own, confirm they are who the document says they are. That gap is where a conversation does the work a document can't.

Before a viewing, it's worth a phone call. Ask why they're wanting to move, and whether they're familiar with the new area. A real person answers easily and consistently, and a quick look to see whether they're on LinkedIn corroborates the employment story against a second source. A fabricated identity starts to wobble, because someone using one can't comfortably hold a fluid conversation with integrity.

This isn't an interrogation, it's the ordinary conversation a hands-on landlord has anyway. Someone genuinely relocating talks easily about the specifics: the school run, the commute, the local shops. That lived detail is the hardest thing of all to fake.

Being there in person matters for the same reason. Showing someone round yourself, rather than leaving it to a key-safe, means the person at the viewing is the person you go on to verify.

There's a timing trap worth naming. It's tempting to leave the formal check to the day you hand over the keys, and treat a quick phone photo of the tenant holding their passport as good enough on its own. It isn't, unless you've actually verified the original with them present, in person or on a live video call, before you take it: a photo with no live check behind it is exactly the image an AI fake is built to pass. By handover day you've already committed to the let. The check belongs earlier: it's good practice to have that conversation before you accept an offer, then take the deposit once you do.

What to do: build your read from the call and the viewing first. Once you accept an offer, run the verified check on every adult who'll live there, the same way whatever their nationality: a British or Irish passport through the DVS route, everyone else verified against the original, in person or on a live video call, before any photo becomes your record of it.

Take a deposit before you spend on referencing

Referencing costs money, and a prospective tenant can pull out after you've paid for it. So once you accept an offer, take a holding deposit before you run anything. It's capped at one week's rent, and if the tenant then withdraws, the holding-deposit rules generally let you keep it toward your costs. Once the tenancy goes ahead, the same holding deposit rolls into the full deposit, and a separate clock starts: protecting your tenant's deposit in a government-approved scheme within 30 days of receiving it.

What to do: take the holding deposit when you accept the offer, before you pay for referencing or start the Right to Rent check.

A managing agent can do the checks

An agent can carry out Right to Rent checks even if they don't collect the rent, but the civil-penalty responsibility only transfers if two things are both true, under Immigration Act 2014, s.25: the agent is acting in the course of a business, and you have a written agreement making them responsible for the checks. Without both, the duty, and the penalty, stays with you.

What to do: if your agent handles Right to Rent, get it in writing and keep a copy.

Keep the proof: your actual protection

Running the check correctly, and keeping the evidence, gives you a "statutory excuse": legal protection against the civil penalty if a tenant later turns out not to have had the right to rent. Lose the record and you lose that protection, even if you did the check.

So the record matters as much as the check. You need to be able to show, months or years later, that you confirmed each occupier's status the right way, on the right date. It's the same discipline as keeping your deposit protection evidence on file: the record is the point, not just the compliant act itself.

A Right to Rent check also leaves you holding copies of someone's identity documents, and the law cuts both ways. Keep them safe and retrievable or you lose your statutory excuse. But don't keep them longer than you're allowed either, because over-retaining someone's personal data is a breach in its own right.

What to do: keep a dated, unalterable copy of every check result, for the tenancy plus one year on a manual check, stored securely where you can retrieve it on demand, not in a phone camera roll.

Your Right to Rent checklist, in order

1. Work out which group you're in. Continuous excuse (British/Irish passport, settled status) or time-limited (eVisa, time-limited visa). It decides whether the 1 October changes touch your next check at all.
2. Talk to every viewer first and make notes to jog your memory later. No fraudster survives a real conversation about a life they've invented.
3. Be there in person at the viewing, or send someone competent to act for you.
4. Accept an offer, then take a holding deposit (capped at one week's rent) before you pay for any checks.
5. Reference the tenant for affordability, and verify every adult (18+) on the tenancy has the right to rent before it starts, the same way whatever their nationality.
6. Pick the right check: the online share-code check, a certified provider (DVS) for British and Irish citizens, a manual check in person or on a live video call, or the Home Office checking service if they have no documents. Never rely on a photo alone without verifying the original first.
7. For a time-limited visa, run that check within the 28 days before the tenancy starts, and diarise the latest of the three follow-up dates.
8. Keep a dated, unalterable copy of every result, retrievable on demand, for the tenancy plus one year on a manual check.
9. If an agent runs the checks, get it in writing and keep the copy, or the duty stays with you.

You understand what's changing. Now make it provable.

For most landlords, 1 October 2026 changes nothing you have to do differently, only what you should understand. For the smaller group checking a time-limited right to rent, the follow-up timing and the record you keep are both sharper than before. Either way, every landlord needs somewhere secure to keep the proof.

That's what UBiQS's free private upload is for: the same secure store where you keep the rest of what managing a tenancy professionally needs, not just this one check. Every Right to Rent check goes into one place, dated and ready the day the council asks. You log the visa expiry date so a time-limited follow-up doesn't slip, and the record stays in the unalterable format the 1 October code now asks for. When a record has done its job, you clear it down, kept while you need it, gone when you don't, which keeps you the right side of GDPR too. Identity documents are never sent off for AI scanning either, they're recorded through UBiQS's private upload path instead.

Start your record in Private Uploads, then choose Right to Rent — Identity Verification. Free for your first property, no card required.

Sources

All rules, dates and figures in this guide are taken from official government sources:

• Immigration Act 2014, section 22: the Right to Rent duty
• Immigration Act 2014, section 24: the statutory excuse
• Immigration Act 2014, section 25: agent civil-penalty transfer
• Immigration Act 2014, section 33A: the criminal offence
• The Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/700)
• Code of practice on right to rent: Right to Rent Scheme for landlords and their agents, 1 October 2026 (gov.uk)
• Code of practice for landlords: avoiding unlawful discrimination, 1 October 2026 (gov.uk)
• How and when to check a tenant's right to rent (gov.uk)
• Tenant Fees Act 2019: holding deposit rules (gov.uk)