Right to Rent in 2026: why digital ID checks are an agent's best defence

General information only — not legal advice. Penalties and legislation referred to are as of June 2026.

Every letting agent has that file. The one with a photocopy of a passport that expired two years before the tenancy started, no date stamp on the check, and nothing to confirm who actually compared it to the tenant. In 2019 that kind of record was sloppy. In 2026, it is a direct route to a five-figure fine.

Right to Rent enforcement has accelerated sharply. According to analysis of Home Office data by identity provider Credas, the number of civil penalties issued has climbed from 235 to more than 375 in a comparable period since the Labour government took office — while the total value of fines rose from £596,400 to around £4.2 million, an increase of roughly 600%. The average penalty per case has risen steeply alongside it. If there was ever an era when agents could rely on leniency, it is over.

The good news is that the law gives agents a complete defence — a statutory excuse — if you follow the right process. Digital identity checks, done correctly, are now among the most reliable ways to build that defence.

What the rules actually require (June 2026)

Right to Rent requires every private landlord and their appointed agent in England to check that each adult occupant has the right to rent before a tenancy starts. There are three compliant methods:

1. Manual inspection of original documents — copy them, record the date the check was made, and retain the copy for the duration of the tenancy.
2. Online share code — the tenant generates a share code via the Home Office portal; you verify it against their date of birth on the landlord portal and save the result.
3. Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT) via a certified provider — a government-certified Digital Verification Service runs technical checks against the document and returns a structured output you retain.

All three can provide a statutory excuse against a civil penalty — but only if the check is conducted correctly and the record is complete. For a tenancy, the maximum penalty for getting it wrong is up to £10,000 per occupier for a first breach, rising to up to £20,000 per occupier for a repeat breach within three years (lower maximums of £5,000 and £10,000 apply to lodgers). Separately, criminal prosecution — carrying an unlimited fine or up to five years’ imprisonment — can apply where a landlord or agent knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that an occupant did not have the right to rent.

Why manual checks are the weak link

Manual inspection sounds simple. It is also the most likely to fall apart under scrutiny. Document fraud is a real and growing problem — one lettings-industry analysis suggests the large majority of fraudulent rental applications involve forged or altered documents. The human eye cannot reliably detect chip tampering, layer manipulation, or the small but growing number of high-quality synthetic passports in circulation. A manual checker who misses a convincing forgery may have no statutory excuse — the fact that the forgery looked genuine is not, by itself, a legal defence.

There are also the procedural slip-ups that have nothing to do with fraud: not retaining a clear copy, not recording the check date, or not flagging that a follow-up check is due when a tenant’s leave expires. Under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (commencement 1 May 2026), assured tenancies are periodic and run on indefinitely, so follow-up check obligations for time-limited leave roll on alongside them rather than ending at a fixed-term date.

How certified digital checks change the risk profile

A certified Digital Verification Service — listed on the GOV.UK Register of Digital Identity and Attribute Services — uses techniques such as biometric matching, document authentication and liveness detection to a defined standard. The technology is designed to catch document fraud that manual inspection routinely misses.

Critically, the framework underpinning these services has been put on a firmer legal footing. The final “gamma” (0.4) UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework was published in June 2025 and came into force on 1 July 2025. The statutory DVS register itself went live on 1 December 2025, when the relevant provisions of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came into force; at that point 48 providers (covering 57 services) were on the register. Certifications under the earlier beta (0.3) framework remained valid only until 31 March 2026, so any provider that did not uplift is no longer compliant. (A further 1.0 framework was issued as a pre-release in March 2026.) In practice, a provider’s output supports a Right to Rent statutory excuse only where it is certified against a current framework publication and the Right to Rent supplementary code.

What you retain from a certified check — typically the applicant’s name, date of birth, photograph, document image, check date, provider name, the level of confidence met and the verification result — constitutes a structured, timestamped audit record. It documents not just that a check happened, but how it was conducted, against what standard, by which certified provider, and on what date. That is the kind of evidence that closes down a Home Office investigation quickly.

The step agents still can’t skip

IDVT and DVS do not do everything. The Home Office requires landlords and agents to carry out a separate imposter check — satisfying themselves that the photograph and biographic details returned by the digital check match the person standing in front of them, or appearing on a video call. This can be done during a viewing or as a brief video call. What it cannot do is be skipped or delegated to the technology alone. The DVS verifies the document; you verify the person.

Retain the DVS output, your record of the imposter check, and a note of the method used (in person or video call), for the duration of the tenancy.

One process, one record, per applicant

The practical problem most agents face is not the individual check — it is the accumulation of checks across dozens of active tenancies, conducted by multiple staff members, using whatever method was most convenient at the time. Inconsistency is where enforcement tends to find its footholds.

The most defensible approach is a single, documented workflow for every applicant: referencing that bundles ID verification with the tenancy checks, so the DVS output, the credit search, employment verification and landlord references all sit in the same record — timestamped, retrievable and demonstrably consistent across your portfolio. That is the model PropertyGoose uses — certified ID verification runs as part of the referencing process, not as a separate step someone may or may not remember to complete.

Our pricing reflects the reality that agents need a predictable cost per application, not a per-check fee on top of a per-reference fee on top of a per-document fee. One credit, one process, one audit trail.

What changes under the Renters’ Rights Act

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, in force from 1 May 2026, affects Right to Rent in one specific but important way: with all assured tenancies now periodic from the outset (fixed terms no longer exist for new tenancies), the follow-up check cycle for time-limited leave is ongoing rather than tied to a fixed-term end date. Agents need a system that flags upcoming repeat checks, not just a process for the initial check.

It is also worth noting that the Act introduced civil penalties of up to £40,000 for the more serious housing offences it covers (with up to £7,000 for lesser breaches). Those ceilings sit under the housing legislation rather than the Immigration Act, but they signal the direction of travel: penalties are rising, enforcement is better resourced, and the appetite for making examples of non-compliant agents is not diminishing.

The short version

Digital ID checks via a certified DVS provider are now among the strongest tools for Right to Rent compliance. They catch fraud that manual inspection misses, produce a structured record that stands up to Home Office scrutiny, and — when combined with a brief imposter check — help give agents a complete statutory excuse. The risk of doing Right to Rent the old way, with photocopied passports and no audit trail, is not abstract in 2026: enforcement is at record levels, fines can reach £20,000 per occupier for repeat breaches, and a single penalty can cost more than a year’s management fees on the property it relates to.

If you want to see how PropertyGoose bundles this into a single referencing workflow — ID verification, credit check, employment and landlord references, all in one place — take a look at how referencing works or compare our approach to the alternatives.

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General information only, not legal advice. All penalties and legislative provisions cited are as of June 2026. If you are uncertain about compliance in a specific case, consult a solicitor or contact the Home Office Right to Rent team directly.