This guide will take you through what you need to know about Right to Rent checks. It includes what they are, how to perform them and what they mean for landlords and tenants.

What is Right to Rent?

Right to Rent is a Home Office initiative that requires residential landlords to check that their tenants or lodgers can legally rent their property. This means that landlords must check passports, travel or identification documents of all adults living in their property to ensure that they have the right to live in the UK PRIOR to letting to them your property.

Who does it apply to?

All residential properties in England; these rules do not currently apply if you are renting in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
All tenants named or otherwise over 18 years old even if there is no tenancy agreement.
All lodgers and sub-letters

Why is Right to Rent important?

The Home Office introduced Right to Rent checks in February 2016 with the aim of making the UK an inhospitable environment for immigrants. As there are not enough border patrol staff to police these laws, landlords have been drafted as make shift enforcers. The Home Office has severe penalties in place to make sure that landlord follow through with this legislation. This includes a 5 year prison sentence or an unlimited fine.

So landlords who are unable to demonstrate that they performed the right to rent check or if you are found to be renting to someone who is not permitted to live in the UK. In fact, you may also fall into trouble if you did check but did not take reasonable amount of care to ensure that documents were incorrect/false or had expired.

How to perform a Right to Rent check

Landlords can delegate the checks to agents, however, there must be a written agreement to do so. Right to rent checks are included with Husmus Tenant Referencing and Husmus Onboard. However, should you want to perform them yourself, here are the steps:

Collect original documents for all proposed occupants over the age of 18.
Check that they have the right to rent.
Verify the document's authenticity.
Verify they belong to the tenant.
Keep a record of the documents and the date the checks were made.
Perform follow up checks for those with time limited Right to Rent

Who has the Right to Rent?

Tenants can have unlimited or time restricted right to rent. If a tenant has the latter, landlords must re-check a month before permissions run out or in 12 months, whichever is longer.

Unlimited right to rent

UK citizens
EEA or Swiss citizens (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden)
People of any nationality with the right of abode
People of any nationality with an indefinite leave to remain

Time-limited right to rent

All other permissions

Here is the official guide from the Home Office.

If you have any questions, get in touch with Husmus today.

What exactly are Right to Rent checks?