In Edition 14 we covered the initial Right to Rent check — the documents, the three methods and the fines. This edition covers the part that catches out landlords who did everything right on day one: the follow-up check.

If you carry out a List B check — where the tenant has a time-limited right to be in the UK — you must repeat the check before their permission expires. Miss that date and your statutory excuse quietly lapses. Nothing arrives in the post to warn you. No reminder is sent. The protection you built at the start of the tenancy simply switches off — and it breaks the moment the original expiry passes.

This edition covers who needs a follow-up check, when it must happen, what to do if the tenant's status can't be verified, and why this obligation now runs for the entire life of a tenancy.

List A documents prove an unlimited right to rent — a British passport, settled status, indefinite leave to remain. List A is checked once and no repeat check is ever needed.

List B documents prove a time-limited right — a visa, pre-settled status, time-limited leave verified online. List B requires follow-up checks for as long as the person remains your occupier.

The distinction matters for EU citizens too. Settled status gives an unlimited right to rent — List A. Pre-settled status is time-limited — List B — so a follow-up check is needed before it expires. Two EU tenants in the same property can sit on opposite sides of this line.

The safe operating rule is simple: diarise the tenant's leave expiry date at the time of the original check, and complete the follow-up before that date arrives. A sensible system is a calendar reminder for every time-limited occupier, triggered by their leave expiry date minus one month.

Why a month early? Because if the tenant's renewal application is still pending, you may need to use the Home Office Landlord Checking Service — which takes time to respond. Starting the follow-up process a month before expiry means you're never conducting the check after your excuse has already lapsed.

It is good practice to diaries both the check date and the leave expiry date at the time of the original check — so the follow-up is a planned event, not a scramble.

Here's how the trap actually catches landlords.

A tenant passes their initial check with a two-year visa. The tenancy runs smoothly. Rent arrives on time. The landlord has no reason to think about immigration status again — there's no renewal conversation because since 1 May 2026 there are no fixed-term renewals, just a rolling periodic tenancy.

And that's precisely the problem. Follow-up checks for occupiers with time-limited leave must continue indefinitely throughout the tenancy — they're no longer prompted by renewal or fixed-term expiry, because those moments no longer exist. The natural checkpoint that used to remind landlords to re-check documents — the tenancy renewal — has been abolished. The follow-up obligation now floats free of any tenancy event. If it isn't in your diary, nothing else will surface it.

Missing the follow-up on time-limited rights breaks your statutory excuse the moment the original expiry passes. From that point, if the tenant turns out not to have the right to rent, you're exposed to the full civil penalty — up to £10,000 per person for a first breach, rising to £20,000 for repeat breaches — exactly as if you'd never checked at all.

Sometimes the follow-up check reveals a problem — the tenant's leave has expired and no extension is showing.

This is the point where landlords most often get it wrong, in both directions.

What you must do: report the occupancy to the Home Office using the online reporting service. The report preserves your statutory excuse — silence destroys it. If they no longer have the right to rent you must report this to the Home Office using the online form to keep your statutory excuse.

What you must not do: take unilateral action. Do not change the locks or harass the tenant — illegal eviction carries separate criminal penalties. Report to the Home Office first to preserve your excuse, then consider Section 8 possession if the situation continues.

The reporting step is what most landlords don't know exists. Your statutory excuse doesn't require you to remove the tenant — it requires you to tell the Home Office. A landlord who reports promptly and follows lawful process is protected. A landlord who quietly lets it continue, or who takes matters into their own hands, is exposed on two separate fronts.

If an existing tenant's permission to stay has expired and they refuse a follow-up check, take legal advice immediately. If the refusal is about discomfort with the digital process, explain it's the same check an employer uses for Right to Work — common and low-risk — and offer to revert to a manual in-person check.

A refusal that persists after reasonable attempts is itself something to document carefully — dated requests, the methods you offered, the tenant's responses. That record is what demonstrates you did everything within your power.

A letting agent conducting Right to Rent checks on the landlord's behalf must follow the same process as the landlord would. Where a written agreement exists that the agent will conduct checks, the statutory excuse runs to the landlord if the agent conducts a compliant check.

Two things matter here. First — the agreement must be in writing. Second — the follow-up checks need to be covered by that agreement too, not just the initial check. A landlord whose agent did the day-one check but where nobody diarised the follow-up has a gap that belongs, legally, to the landlord.

✅ At every initial List B check — diarise two dates — the leave expiry date and a reminder one month before it.

✅ Keep a register of every time-limited occupier — across your whole portfolio, not per property. The question "who needs a re-check this quarter" should be answerable in one place.

✅ Use the online share code service for follow-ups — a check done over an unverified video call or against a scan no longer gives a statutory excuse. For a tenant you cannot meet in person, use the online service or a certified digital verification provider.

✅ Retain dated evidence of every follow-up — a saved online check result or dated copy of documents, plus a record of when the next check is due.

✅ If the check fails — report to the Home Office immediately — the report preserves your excuse. Then take legal advice on next steps. Never self-help.

✅ HMO landlords — check every new occupier — checks done on existing occupants do not extend to a new arrival. Every room turnover is a fresh check, and every international student on a visa is a fresh follow-up date to diarise.

✅ Using an agent — check your written agreement covers follow-ups — not just initial checks.

✅ Add Right to Rent dates to your PRS Database preparation — check dates and follow-up dates are exactly the kind of compliance records the database will expect you to have organised.

The initial Right to Rent check is an event. The follow-up obligation is a system — and it's the system part that fails. With fixed terms and renewals gone, no tenancy milestone will ever remind you that a re-check is due. The obligation lives entirely in your own records now.

The landlords who get caught by the expiry trap are rarely careless on day one. They're landlords who did the first check perfectly, filed it away, and never built the reminder that the first check quietly demanded.

Diaries it at the start — and the follow-up check becomes a ten-minute admin task instead of a £10,000 exposure.

The Property Portfolio database includes Right to Rent check date, check type and follow-up date fields for every property — the register that makes the expiry trap impossible to fall into.

£19 one-time, instant access 👉 uklandlordproperty.gumroad.com/l/oahbhl

Also on Etsy 👉 tlbtemplates.etsy.com

Coming up next edition — Smoke and CO alarms: the rules, the checks and the fines.

The Landlords Brief is published for UK landlords. Subscribe free at thelandlordsbrief.co.uk. This newsletter is for general information only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Home Office guidance on follow-up check timing should be confirmed for your specific circumstances.