Online services that match people to work come inside the right to work scheme on 1 October 2026. So do individual sub-contractors. And because section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 also extends liability along contractual chains, a platform, an agency and an end client can each end up exposed to the same missed check.
That is a structural change for anyone running gig, app-based or self-billing supply. The gig model was built on the premise that the platform introduces and the parties contract. Immigration compliance no longer respects that separation.
Why Platforms Were Outside the Scheme Before
The civil penalty regime was designed around employment. A platform that introduced a courier to a delivery client was not the employer, and frequently argued it was not an employer of anyone at all. The individual might be self-employed, engaged under a worker's contract, or supplied through a third party.
The practical result was a gap. Everyone in the chain could point at someone else, and in a genuinely fragmented chain it was sometimes unclear who was meant to hold the check. That gap is what section 48 closes.
The Three New Categories, in Plain Terms
Online Matching Services
If your business operates a service that matches individuals to work, you are in scope. The test is functional rather than about what you call yourself. A job board that publishes adverts and passes applications to an employer is a different thing from a platform where a client selects a specific individual and work begins through your system. If shifts are booked, accepted and paid through your product, look hard at your position.
Individual Sub-Contractors
Engaging an individual to provide services, rather than employing them, is now within the scheme. This catches a great deal of construction, care, courier, cleaning and trades supply. It also catches the common arrangement where a worker invoices through their own name rather than a company.
Workers Under a Worker's Contract
The category most temporary labour actually sits in. Covered in detail in our piece on what changes for recruitment agencies.
How Chain Liability Works in Practice
Consider a four-party arrangement that is entirely ordinary in UK logistics. A retailer contracts with a logistics provider. The provider contracts with an agency. The agency sources drivers through a platform. A driver without the right to work completes shifts.
Before October, the question was narrow: who employed the driver? After October, the question is wider, because exposure can attach at more than one point in that chain. The retailer's procurement team may have had no visibility of the platform at all, and that lack of visibility is not itself a defence.
The commercial consequence is predictable. Organisations at the top of chains will start requiring evidence rather than assurances. A clause saying your supplier "complies with all applicable immigration legislation" has never been worth much, and it is about to be worth less.
What Changes in Your Contracts
Three kinds of drafting are worth reviewing now.
- Allocation of the check. State explicitly which party performs the prescribed check, before which moment, and to which standard. Silence will be resolved against whoever has the deepest pockets.
- Evidence and audit. A right to require production of the check evidence within a defined period, not merely a right to be told a check happened.
- Sub-contracting controls. A prohibition on onward sub-contracting without consent, because an unknown second tier is where chain exposure actually materialises.
Indemnities have their place, but an indemnity is a route to recovering money from a counterparty who may not have any. It does not stop a penalty being issued against you, and it does not protect a sponsor licence.
The Sponsor Licence Consequence
For any organisation in the chain that holds a sponsor licence, a civil penalty for illegal working is not just a financial event. It can put the licence at risk, and licence revocation means sponsored workers must stop work.
That asymmetry is worth explaining internally. A missed check on a single gig shift, sitting three contracts away from your own business, can in principle threaten the immigration permission of an entire sponsored engineering team. Procurement decisions about low-value flexible labour have therefore become decisions with workforce-wide risk attached.
Practical Controls for Platform and Gig Supply
Volume and churn are what make this hard. A platform may onboard thousands of individuals a month, many of whom complete one shift and disappear. The controls that work are the ones built into the flow rather than bolted on afterwards.
Gate the Engagement, Not the Signup
Verification should block the first shift, not the account creation. People abandon onboarding, and an unverified dormant account is harmless. An unverified completed shift is not.
Automate the Expiry Diary
Time-limited permission is the single most common failure point at scale. Follow-up checks need to be driven by the system, with the account suspended automatically when a date passes and no fresh check exists.
Keep the Evidence Attached to the Engagement
Not to the person record, and not in a shared drive. If you cannot retrieve, for one named shift on one named date, the check that was in force at that moment, your statutory excuse is theoretical.
Check Everyone, Identically
High-churn onboarding is where selective checking creeps in, usually with good intentions and under time pressure. The Home Office has published a draft code of practice on avoiding unlawful discrimination while preventing illegal working, and its logic is simple: a uniform process protects you twice. Varying a check by name, accent or apparent nationality creates Equality Act 2010 exposure on top of the immigration exposure.
What This Does Not Change
Penalty levels are unchanged: up to £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and up to £60,000 where there has been a previous breach. The mechanics of a valid check are unchanged. Online status checks via share code, manual document checks against the prescribed lists, identity service provider checks for British and Irish passport holders, and the Employer Checking Service where status cannot otherwise be confirmed.
What has changed is the population of engagements those unchanged rules now apply to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a Job Board an Online Matching Service?
It depends on function rather than label. Publishing vacancies and forwarding applications sits differently from facilitating the selection of a named individual and the commencement of work through your platform. Where a product does both, take advice on the specific flows.
We Only Introduce. The Client Engages. Are We Liable?
Introduction-only models need reassessment rather than assumption. The combination of the matching services category and chain liability means the old answer no longer holds automatically.
Does This Apply Across the Whole UK?
Immigration is a reserved matter and the right to work scheme applies across the United Kingdom. Employment law differences between jurisdictions do not change the immigration position.
What If a Worker Supplies a Share Code That Does Not Work?
Do not proceed on the basis of a document alone where online verification is the prescribed route. Use the Employer Checking Service where you cannot establish status, and do not allow work to start in the meantime.
Can We Rely on a Check Another Agency Did?
Relying on a third party's check is risky unless you hold the evidence and can show the check met the prescribed requirements. An excuse you cannot evidence yourself is not one you can rely on.
The Direction of Travel
Section 48 is part of a pattern. The umbrella company PAYE rules that took effect on 6 April 2026 made agencies and end clients accountable for tax further down the chain. The Fair Work Agency, established in April 2026, consolidated labour market enforcement with powers to inspect and prosecute. Now immigration compliance follows the same logic.
The common thread is that fragmenting a supply chain no longer fragments responsibility. Organisations that can see into their own chains, and evidence what happens inside them, are the ones this regime is survivable for.
This article is general information about a change in the law, not legal advice. Take specialist immigration advice on your own arrangements.
Sources
The Stationery Office. Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, Section 48.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/31/section/48
Home Office. Draft Employer's Guide to Right to Work Checks: 16 July 2026.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-checks-employers-guide/draft-employers-guide-to-right-to-work-checks-16-july-2026-accessible
Home Office. Extension of the Right to Work Scheme to Other Working Arrangements: Equality Impact Assessment.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-right-to-work-equality-impact-assessment/prevention-of-illegal-working-and-extension-of-the-prohibition-on-employment-the-right-to-work-scheme-to-other-working-arrangements-equality-impact
Home Office. Draft Code of Practice for Employers: Avoiding Unlawful Discrimination While Preventing Illegal Working.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/right-to-work-draft-code-of-practice-for-employers-avoiding-unlawful-discrimination/draft-code-of-practice-for-employers-avoiding-unlawful-discrimination-while-preventing-illegal-working
GOV.UK. Checking a Job Applicant's Right to Work.
https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work
GOV.UK. Employer Checking Service: Request a Right to Work Check.
https://www.gov.uk/employee-immigration-employment-status
The Stationery Office. Equality Act 2010.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
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