Changes to Right to Rent Checks from 6 April 2022

Published: 24/03/2022

Landlords must carry out checks on all prospective tenants, whether British or overseas citizens, to ensure that the relevant individuals have lawful status in the UK before they rent their property to them.

Right to rent checks can be done by a manual document check or an online check. Which is used depends on how the individual has been granted their immigration status.

British citizens can be verified by a manual check of their original passport in their presence.

An online check can be made using the Home Office’s online checking service to view the immigration status of existing and prospective tenants which enables checks to be carried out by video call.

However, from 6 April 2022, the right to rent online checking service must be used for individuals holding a biometric residence card or a biometric residence permit. It will no longer be an option to complete a manual right to rent check for such individuals.