UK Landlords - Check your tenant's immigration status to avoid penalties.

1st December 2014 the UK Home Office brought requirements on Landlords and Letting agents providing tenancies to non-EEA nationals. Some critiques say that this could lead to discrimination. Interest-groups believe that it’s an excessive burden on the Landlords because it entails punitive measures if a landlord fails carry out proper checks. The tenants include long or short term tenancy’s or even lodges.

Landlords have to carry out checks on tenants above the age of 18 years. However this will affect only tenancy agreements commencing on or after 1st December 2014.

If you are a landlord letting a property after 1st December 2014, and if you fail to carry out a reasonable check on the tenant to ascertain the his/her UK immigration status and if the tenant is found to be living in the UK illegally and in your property then, you, as a landlord could face heavy civil penalties.

Landlords must check evidence of person’s identity and the citizenship to ascertain if he/she is a British citizen, EU citizen or EEA citizen exercising right to live in the UK. Any tenants from a non-EEA country must establish to the Landlord that he/she has right to live in the UK under a specific and valid immigration status.

The onerous of checking the tenant’s immigration status falls on the landlord. However the tenets therefore have a duty to establish their immigration status when required by the landlord.

The system to check the tenant’s immigration status has been made easy by the Home Office website by allowing landlords to use the ‘Right to rent tool’. https://www.gov.uk/landlord-immigration-check

Landlords MUST carry out checks and most importantly maintain documentary evidence and systems to keep abreast of key-dates pertaining to tenant’s immigration status as the right to stay in the UK could expire after the tenancy is signed. The landlords also must keep records of ‘proof of reasonable checks’ as a mitigating evidence if in case the tenants had not provided genuine documents when the Home Office carries out random checks on the property and its tenants.