Illegal working penalties for UK employers have reached their most severe level on record — and so has the enforcement activity behind them. In 2025, immigration enforcement teams carried out 12,791 visits to businesses across the UK, the highest number ever recorded
Imagine it is a Tuesday morning. Immigration enforcement officers arrive at your premises, present their authority, and begin moving through your workforce. By the end of the visit, several workers have been arrested and you have received a referral notice advising that a civil penalty may follow.
This is not a hypothetical scenario constructed to alarm you. It is the kind of visit that took place more than twelve thousand times across the UK in 2025 alone — and it is happening more often than at any point in recorded history.
The Scale of Enforcement Has Never Been Greater
The Home Office published provisional enforcement data covering illegal working activity to the end of December 2025. The figures, drawn from live operational systems and published in early 2026, make for serious reading.
In 2025, immigration enforcement teams carried out 12,791 illegal working visits to businesses across the UK — the highest number ever recorded in a single calendar year. Those visits resulted in 8,971 arrests, also a record high for a single year, and 2,251 people were detained.
Looking at the broader period from July 2024 to December 2025, arrests from illegal working visits rose by 83% compared to the equivalent prior period. Visits to businesses suspected of employing illegal workers increased by 77% in the same window. These are not marginal upward movements. They represent a fundamental shift in the scale and intensity of UK immigration enforcement.
No part of the country has been untouched. London saw illegal working visits rise from around 2,000 in 2024 to more than 2,700 in 2025. The North West, West Midlands, South West, and Wales all recorded significant increases. Enforcement has reached businesses across multiple sectors and regions, affecting employers of all sizes.
What the Law Requires of Every UK Employer
Under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, every employer in the UK is legally required to carry out right to work checks on all employees before they begin work. This obligation applies to every hire, regardless of nationality.
The right to work check process depends on the individual worker’s circumstances. For many workers, particularly those with a digital immigration status, the Home Office online right to work checking service — using a share code provided by the employee — will generally be the appropriate method. For workers who hold physical documents such as a passport showing the right to work, a manual document check against the Home Office prescribed list is typically the correct approach. The right method depends on the individual worker’s circumstances, and employers should confirm which applies in each case.
In all cases, employers must retain evidence that the check was carried out. Where a worker’s permission to work is time-limited, employers must also carry out a follow-up check before that permission expires.
A compliant right to work check, completed correctly and retained properly, can provide a statutory excuse if a worker is later found not to have the right to work. Without that check, you have no statutory defence.
Civil and Criminal Penalties for Getting It Wrong
The financial exposure for employers who fail to carry out correct right to work checks is substantial. If you employ someone who does not have the right to work, and you did not carry out the correct checks, you may receive a civil penalty of up to £60,000 for each illegal worker. You will be sent a referral notice first, giving you the opportunity to respond, followed by a civil penalty notice if you are found liable. You then have 28 days to pay, object, or seek an agreement.
In addition, the Home Office may publish your business details as a warning to other employers.
Where an employer knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that a worker did not have the right to work, the consequences move into criminal territory. A criminal conviction can result in up to five years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine. Individual directors and managers can face personal prosecution, not just the company itself.
The statutory excuse is the critical protection available to employers — but only if the check was completed correctly, in the right way, for that specific worker, and documented properly. A check that was carried out informally, incompletely, or using the wrong method may not provide that protection.
What Happens During a Home Office Visit
Immigration enforcement teams operate without advance notice. When they arrive, they will ask to see employment records, right to work documentation, payroll records, and rotas. They will speak to workers directly.
If a worker cannot demonstrate their right to work, or if your documentation is absent or incomplete, you may be issued a referral notice. You will have the opportunity to make representations, and it will generally fall to you to demonstrate that a compliant check was carried out and retained. Where that cannot be shown, a civil penalty may follow — and employers should be aware that a lack of knowledge about a worker’s status does not in itself provide a defence if the correct checks were not completed.
Sectors that employ large numbers of overseas workers — including hospitality, social care, food production, construction, and cleaning — have historically seen concentrated enforcement attention. However, the 2025 data reflects enforcement activity spread across a wide range of industries and regions.
The Risk to Your Sponsor Licence
If your business holds a sponsor licence and an illegal working issue is identified, the consequences can extend well beyond a civil penalty. The Home Office takes compliance failures seriously when assessing sponsor licence holders, and an illegal working finding may trigger broader scrutiny of your sponsorship duties and HR systems.
Depending on the facts, the severity of the issue, and your wider compliance history, this scrutiny may result in your licence being downgraded, suspended, or in serious cases revoked. If revocation does occur, it may mean you can no longer sponsor skilled workers or students, your currently sponsored workers could have their immigration permission affected, and you may be unable to apply for a new licence for a significant period.
Sponsor licence holders should treat any compliance issue seriously. An illegal working finding does not automatically lead to revocation, but it creates a risk that can threaten your ability to employ overseas workers entirely.
Understanding your compliance position — including knowing how to check your company’s sponsorship licence status, when to repeat right to work checks, and whether your HR processes meet Home Office standards — is not optional for businesses that depend on an international workforce.
The Three Compliance Errors That Cause the Most Problems
Most employers who receive civil penalty notices are not deliberately trying to employ people without the right to work. The majority are businesses that made process errors, missed a renewal, or misunderstood what the rules require.
The first common error is failing to repeat right to work checks when a worker’s leave to remain has a time limit. A worker who had valid permission when you hired them may not still have it a year or two later. You must identify time-limited permissions, diarise repeat checks, and carry them out before that permission expires.
The second is using the wrong checking method. For workers with a digital immigration status, the Home Office online service is the correct route — a physical document check alone is not the right approach for these individuals. Employers should confirm which checking method applies to each worker based on their specific status.
The third is inadequate record-keeping. Carrying out a check is not enough on its own. You must retain copies of the documents or records used, and you must keep them for the duration of employment and for two years after employment ends. A check you cannot prove is a check that does not protect you.
Do You Know Your Current Compliance Position?
With enforcement at record levels and penalties at their most severe, the question every employer should be asking right now is a straightforward one: if the Home Office visited your business tomorrow, could you demonstrate a compliant right to work file for every person on your payroll?
Could you show that your sponsored workers’ visas are current and their work conditions are being met? Could you confirm that your HR processes would catch a document renewal issue before it became a liability?
If there is uncertainty in any of those answers, it is worth acting now rather than waiting to find out the hard way.
Find Out Where Your Business Stands — Before Anyone Else Does
UKVicas is designed specifically for UK employers and sponsor licence holders who want to manage their immigration compliance proactively rather than reactively.
Register at ukvicas.com/registration and our team will contact you to arrange a free 15-minute demo of the platform. We will show you exactly how the software works for your business and workforce size. After the demo, you can start a full 14-day free trial with no commitment required.
The employers who are best protected are not the ones hoping enforcement passes them by. They are the ones who already understand their compliance position and have the processes in place to maintain it.
Register now at ukvicas.com/registration
Source: Home Office, Illegal working and enforcement activity to the end of December 2025 (provisional data from live operational systems, published 2026). GOV.UK: Penalties for employing illegal workers.
This article is general information only and does not constitute legal advice.