Letting a room? The check is compulsory, and the penalty runs to £20,000
Every new tenant must be checked, and only the landlord can do it. Two things are needed: the tenant’s share code and their date of birth. Checking only the people who “look foreign” is a separate breach of the law.
Letting a room in your own flat, subletting, or taking in a lodger — in every one of these cases the law requires you to check whether the person is allowed to rent in Britain. It is called right to rent, and the duty sits with whoever lets the property.
First things first: nobody can do this for you
Not us, not an agent, not a friendly solicitor can check someone’s status and hand you a certificate. The point of the law is that only a check you carried out yourself, through the government service, protects you from a penalty. If an agent does it, they must do it on your behalf under a contract — the responsibility still ends with you.
Who it covers
The scheme applies in England only. It has not been commenced in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland — no such check is required there.
You must check everyone aged 18 or over who will live in the property as their main home, not only the person who signs the agreement.
How the check works
Almost everyone now holds a digital status, so the check is done online and takes a couple of minutes. You need exactly two things from the tenant:
- their share code, which they generate themselves;
- their date of birth.
No passport, no copies of documents, no photographs of a card — for a digital status they prove nothing.
You then go to the checking service on GOV.UK, enter the code and the date of birth, and see the answer: whether the person can rent, and until when.
Keep the result: print the page or save it as a file, and record the date of the check. Hold it for the length of the tenancy and one year after.
Where the tenant gets a share code
The tenant generates it on GOV.UK using their date of birth and one document — a BRP, passport or national identity card. The code is theirs to hand out: they decide who gets it and when. Never ask a tenant for the login and password to their status profile.
What a mistake costs
| Who is living there | First breach | Repeat within three years |
|---|---|---|
| Lodger | £5,000 | £10,000 |
| Occupier | £10,000 | £20,000 |
The penalty is per person without the right to rent. A first-breach penalty paid within 21 days is reduced by 30%.
The trap people fall into most
You must check every new tenant, without exception — including the ones with no accent who were born here. Checking only those who look foreign to you is discrimination: a separate breach with its own consequences, and one that gets caught regularly.
The rule is simple: the same procedure for everyone who moves in. That way you are both protected from a penalty and not exposed to a complaint.
If you are the one being checked
You are not obliged to hand a landlord your passport or a copy of it. A share code and your date of birth are enough. If someone asks to keep your original document “for a couple of days”, or wants your profile login, that is wrong — and you can decline politely without risk: the check by code is what the law recognises.
Links to all three government services — check a tenant, check a worker, view your own status — are collected on our services page.
We give no individual legal advice and check nobody’s status: share codes and dates of birth are entered on the government service alone. For an unusual case — a tenant mid-application with a status in transition, say — a landlord can request a separate check from the Home Office.
