Contractors on a biometric residence permit risk folding their umbrella company

What do you call a contractor with a BRP?

Answer: A potential umbrella-folding liability waiting to happen!

And that because this liability could result in a penalty for the worker’s entity, such as an umbrella company, of £45,000.

Biometric Residence Permit: no laughing matter, unless a 60k penalty tickles you

So you see, a contractor with a BRP – that’s a Biometric Residence Permit – is no joke, despite how I started out at the top!

New Home Office guidance says that the penalty, which by the way is per worker, states that a non-compliance sanction could be as much as £60,000.

And just to reiterate to any already margin-pressed umbrella companies reading this, that’s a £45-60k penalty per worker, writes Keith Rosser, a director of Reed Screening.

New Home Office Right To Work guidance: the significant bit as of Feb 2025

The new Home Office guidance, entitled Employer’s Guide to Right To Work Checks, tries to focus UK employers’ attention on complying with new RTW rules as a whole.

For readers in a rush, the 11-chapter document even offers a section on “the most significant updates.”

To save you looking, alongside a recap on all existing Right To Work (RTW) requirements for employers, the February 12th guidance is mainly interesting to those of us in the digital hiring space for confirming the change from BRPs to online e-visa accounts.

Are you a BRP contractor? Get yourself an online e-visa account now

In short, contractors who have a BRP must ensure they have now created an online e-visa account instead.

Why? Well, Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs) have now been decommissioned. It’s an important fact for both contractors and umbrella companies to grasp, because BRPs have been replaced with  e-visas as part of a digital transformation programme at the Home Office.

With now eye-watering penalties in play, it is essential that contractors who have BRPs create an online e-visa account with UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI).

Biometric Residence Permit = no Right to Work

Failure to do so means a contractor with a BRP won’t be able to demonstrate their Right To Work to anyone engaging them, including an umbrella company.

It’s no bad idea to bring BRP decommissioning and other Right To Work developments together in guidance like this. After all, a lot of these changes have been phased in since the system was introduced in 2019.

As a result of this phasing in, employers should have insisted on e-visas -- rather than BRPs -- since April 2022. But falling in the middle of the huge digital RTW changes that occurred then, meant that many employers missed BRPs being banished. That's partly why the Home Office are clarifying Right to Work (RTW) rules now

What does no more BRPs mean for umbrella companies?

Entities employing workers or engaging contractors will need to be aware that they can no longer accept a BRP as proof of a Right To Work, even if the residence permit is still in date. In these circumstances, an e-visa/sharecode/online check is required.

Umbrellas be aware -- the only exemption is where the worker has been continuously employed since before April 2022, and the BRP was checked correctly at that time.

Where the BRP was not checked correctly prior to April 2022 or has been relied upon since for a contractor’s right to work, the entity needs to ensure the contractor has an online account and that right to work can be evidenced.

Strictly speaking, this does not mean a penalty will be avoided, as the Home Office will look at the checks carried out at the time of initial employment.

Do Right To Work checks apply to contractors?

But it’s not just brollies who could probably do with a big piece of guidance outlining RTW rules in one place.

There has, at times, been a misconception that the Right To Work rules don't apply to contractors.

Let me restate it. Anyone on a biometric resident permit must ensure they have created an online e-visa account, and all employing parties have a duty to ensure that their workers have created such an account and that Right To Work has been validated this way. 

It has always been the case that employers pay greater attention because naturally, that's where most of the risk lies.

However, as employers get better at meeting their legal obligations, contractors could be precluded from getting work if they haven't created an online e-visa account.

The digital revolution (is far from over, as one in five are still excluded)

As a member of ECHO (Employers Co-operating with the Home Office), we have long promoted and lobbied for digitising Right To Work, in particular working with the Home Office between 2020 and 2022 to introduce digital right to work checks.

More recently, our organisation recommended NINE improvements to right to work which were agreed with a minister.

More reform is urgently needed, however.

The current ‘digital-first’ approach is exactly what the UK needs to make hiring fast and remote, but digital only extends to people with an e-visa or an in-date British or Irish passport.

So the one in five of the population with an expired or no British / Irish passport face two realities, and neither are satisfactory. For their RTW check, these individuals can attend in-person with their birth certificate or equivalent document, or they can send their original document in the post to the employer (or umbrella company).

A friction is creating second-class contract job-seekers

Both these options add significant friction to the process, slowing down hiring substantially. And in the case of contractors, the friction makes it very likely that they will miss out on work, compared with a contractor who can evidence their right to work remotely, in seconds.

In the temporary labour market, this friction has very much created a two tier-system and a second-class contract job-seeker.

What else needs fixing?

In September 2024, the Home Office sought to clarify that umbrella companies and other supply chain intermediaries are responsible for Right To Work checks.

But there remains some confusion and, crucially, where liability sits.

This confusion is caused by the complex nature of the UK labour market and the various staffing models including the ‘gig economy.’ Positively, such ambiguity is being worked on by the Home Office.

Right To Work refresher: What else new do umbrellas need to know?

So-called "clipped" British or Irish passports are no longer acceptable in an in-person Right To Work check as these documents are considered cancelled.

Even though this does not nullify the holder's status as a British citizen and thereby their right to work, these documents can no longer be used.

In most in-person cases, the document would therefore need to be the birth certificate.

Are short birth certificates acceptable as proof of Right To Work?

On this precise point, the February 12th 2025 Home Office guidance reminds employers and workers that short birth certificates are acceptable. Previously, just the full birth certificate was acceptable (alongside proof of National Insurance which remains a requirement).

The Right To Work guidance also includes an acknowledgement of the Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme, which opened on 04/02/25 and permits successful applicants to stay in the UK for up to three years. The Home Office guidance adds that the section on RTW covid-19 adjusted checks has been removed. 

TL;DR: Home Office employer guidance on Right To Work checks - what do contractors need to do?

Contractors with BRPs must ensure they have created an online e-visa account. 

Employers, umbrella companies, and end-client engagers must understand their Right To Work responsibilities and ensure their workforce is compliant.

Failure to ensure Right to Work compliance could end up imposing extremely large sanctions on the employing body, with penalties of between £45,000 and £60,000 per worker.

Alongside restating existing RTW requirements, the February 2025 guidance by The Home Office reconfirms the change from BRPs to online e-visa accounts, and the removal of "clipped" passports, as no longer being acceptable proof of Right To Work.

While this new ‘clipped’ rule is perhaps slightly old, the rest of this 11-chapter guidance isn’t joking around – at odds with this article’s intro -- and sounds stern about enforcing RTW rules. If anyone isn't clear on the existing rules, it is important to get acquainted, and quickly.