A nursery owner in Leeds hired a teaching assistant last autumn. She ran a DBS check — Enhanced, with barred list — and it came back clear. She assumed that covered everything. She did not conduct a separate right-to-work check.
Three months later, the Home Office visited. The employee was a pre-settled status holder whose permission had expired. The nursery was issued a civil penalty notice. The DBS check — thorough as it was — had nothing to do with immigration status.
This confusion between DBS checks and right-to-work checks is remarkably common. Many employers, particularly smaller businesses without dedicated HR teams, treat them as interchangeable or assume that one subsumes the other. They do not. They are separate legal obligations, governed by different legislation, checking different things, for different purposes.
Getting them confused is not a minor administrative error. It is a compliance failure that can result in fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker for right-to-work failures and regulatory action for DBS failures, including criminal prosecution in the most serious cases.
What each check actually does
Right-to-work checks
A right-to-work (RTW) check verifies that a person has legal permission to work in the UK. It is governed by the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and is an obligation on every UK employer for every employee, without exception.
The check involves verifying original documents from a prescribed list (or using the Home Office online checking service for those with biometric residence permits, biometric residence cards, or frontier worker permits). It must be conducted before employment begins and, for employees with time-limited permission, repeated before that permission expires.
A properly conducted RTW check establishes a statutory excuse — a legal defence that protects the employer from a civil penalty if the employee is later found not to have the right to work.
What it tells you: Whether this person is legally entitled to work in the UK, and whether there are any restrictions on their employment (hours, type of work, etc.).
What it does not tell you: Anything about criminal history, safeguarding suitability, qualifications, or professional registration.
DBS checks
A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check reveals information about a person's criminal record and, at enhanced level, any relevant police intelligence. DBS checks are governed by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (as amended) and the Police Act 1997.
There are four levels of DBS check:
- Basic — shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions. Any employer can request this for any role.
- Standard — shows spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands, and warnings. Available only for specified roles.
- Enhanced — standard information plus any relevant information held by local police. Required for roles involving regular contact with children or vulnerable adults.
- Enhanced with barred list check — enhanced information plus a check against the DBS barred lists (adults, children, or both). Required for roles in regulated activity.
What it tells you: Whether this person has relevant criminal convictions, cautions, or is barred from working with specific vulnerable groups.
What it does not tell you: Anything about immigration status, right to work, visa conditions, or employment restrictions.
Why they cannot substitute for each other
The confusion typically flows in one direction: employers assume that a DBS check, particularly an enhanced one, is comprehensive enough to cover right-to-work verification. The reasoning is understandable — if the government is checking someone's background at that depth, surely immigration status would be included.
It would not. The DBS and the Home Office immigration enforcement system are separate databases, operated by separate government departments, for separate purposes. A DBS check does not query immigration records. A right-to-work check does not query criminal records.
This means it is entirely possible — and not uncommon — for someone to:
- Pass a DBS check and fail a right-to-work check — they have no criminal record but their visa has expired
- Pass a right-to-work check and fail a DBS check — they have full UK work rights but have relevant criminal convictions
- Pass both checks — they have work rights and a clear criminal record
- Fail both checks — they have no work rights and relevant convictions
Each scenario requires a different employer response. Treating the checks as interchangeable means you will have blind spots in whichever direction you neglect.
The sequencing matters
Beyond the confusion about what each check covers, there is a practical sequencing issue that many employers get wrong.
Right-to-work must be checked first. The Home Office employer guidance requires that RTW verification is completed before employment begins — ideally before the offer is made unconditional, and certainly before the employee's first day.
DBS checks often take longer. A basic DBS check typically takes 1-2 weeks. Enhanced checks can take 4-8 weeks, and occasionally longer if there are police information disclosures to process. Many employers allow employees to start work while their DBS check is being processed, subject to a risk assessment and supervision arrangements.
The correct sequence is:
- Conduct the right-to-work check (before employment starts)
- Submit the DBS application (can be done in parallel)
- Allow the employee to start, with appropriate risk management if the DBS is still pending
- Receive and review the DBS disclosure
- Take any necessary action based on the disclosure
Critically, you cannot reverse this. You cannot allow someone to start while their right-to-work check is pending. There is no "supervision arrangement" that compensates for an incomplete RTW check. An employee working without a verified right to work exposes you to a civil penalty from day one.
Sectors where both checks are mandatory
In many sectors, both checks are not just good practice but legal requirements. The overlap is particularly significant in:
Health and social care
Care workers are engaged in regulated activity with vulnerable adults. This means an Enhanced DBS check with a check of the adults' barred list is required. Simultaneously, the care sector's heavy reliance on overseas workers means that right-to-work checks are essential — and the Home Office has identified care as a priority enforcement sector.
CQC inspections review both sets of records. A care home that has DBS checks in order but missing right-to-work documentation will face action on the RTW failure. A home with RTW checks completed but DBS checks missing or expired will face action on the safeguarding failure.
Education
Teachers and support staff in schools, colleges, and early years settings require Enhanced DBS checks (with children's barred list for those in regulated activity). Schools must also conduct right-to-work checks on all staff. Ofsted inspects both.
The Teaching Regulation Agency maintains its own prohibition list, adding another layer of verification that is separate from both DBS and RTW.
Recruitment agencies
Agencies that supply workers to regulated sectors face a compound obligation. They must conduct their own pre-employment checks (both DBS and RTW) on the workers they place. The end client — the care home, school, or hospital — has a separate obligation to verify those checks independently.
The accountability gap between agency and client is a known compliance risk, particularly in care where last-minute staffing changes are common and verification at the point of arrival is often skipped.
Tracking them independently
Because DBS and RTW checks have different validity periods, different renewal requirements, and different legal frameworks, they must be tracked as separate compliance items.
Right-to-work checks have specific follow-up requirements for employees with time-limited permission. If someone holds a Graduate visa valid until June 2027, you need a system that flags a follow-up check before that date. The check itself is tied to the permission period, not an arbitrary renewal cycle.
DBS checks do not have a formal expiry date — a DBS certificate is accurate only at the moment it is issued. However, most sectors have established renewal cycles (typically every three years) and the DBS Update Service allows employers to check for changes to an individual's status at any time for a small annual fee.
Tracking these on a single spreadsheet — or worse, in a filing cabinet — is where things go wrong. When the renewal dates diverge (a DBS renewal is due in March, a visa expires in September), the risk of one being missed increases significantly.
Common mistakes employers make
Based on published enforcement data and inspection reports, the most frequent errors include:
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Assuming DBS covers RTW — the nursery owner scenario. A comprehensive criminal record check tells you nothing about immigration status.
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Conducting RTW but not DBS in roles that require it — the immigration check is done because "that's the one with the big fine," while the DBS check is treated as optional.
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Not distinguishing between DBS levels — using a basic DBS check for a role that legally requires an enhanced check, or conducting an enhanced check without the barred list component when regulated activity is involved.
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Failing to re-check — conducting both checks at the point of hire and never revisiting. RTW status can change (visa expiry, status change). DBS status can change (new conviction, addition to barred list). Both need ongoing monitoring.
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Not recording which check was done when — an audit trail requires not just that checks were conducted but evidence of when, by whom, and what the result was. An inspector needs to see this documented, not described from memory.
Building a complete pre-employment checking process
A compliant process for a role that requires both DBS and RTW checks should include:
- Right-to-work verification completed before the start date, with copies of documents retained and dated
- DBS application submitted as early as possible, at the correct level for the role
- Risk assessment documented if the employee starts before the DBS is returned, including supervision arrangements
- Ongoing monitoring with automated alerts for visa expiry dates and DBS renewal dates
- Centralised records accessible to anyone who might need to produce them during an inspection or audit
This is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is the minimum infrastructure required to demonstrate compliance with two separate legal frameworks that apply to a significant proportion of UK employers.
Certifyd's Right to Work Portal manages the RTW verification side of pre-employment checking — automated document collection, digital verification, audit trail generation, and expiry monitoring — ensuring your right-to-work compliance is always current, always documented, and always accessible alongside your other employment checks.