In July 2025, a chip shop owner in Surrey was fined £40,000 by the Home Office for employing an illegal worker, despite not knowing anything was wrong. He believed his employee must have been using a false identity, but said there were no red flags to suggest that.
When he looked into challenging the fine, an immigration lawyer told him it could push his total costs as high as £80,000 – leaving him with no choice but to pay the fine.
With Home Office enforcement visits rising across the logistics industry, you could find yourself in the exact same position.
Why are logistics businesses being targeted?
Since December 2025, right to work liability has been extended across entire supply chains. This means logistics businesses are now facing increased scrutiny. Combined with high staff turnover, gig workers, and busy peak seasons, compliance gaps begin to appear quickly.
To put it into perspective, Home Office enforcements have increased by over 70%, with 12,300 arrests recorded between July 2024 and December 2025 alone. Fines have also quadrupled since 2014, with first offences carrying right to work penalties of up to £45,000.
If you get caught again within three years, this penalty increases to £60,000 per worker.
Where are logistics operators getting caught out?
Like the chip shop owner, most operators who end up with a right to work penalty didn’t intentionally hire an illegal worker. In the majority of cases, it comes down to small, unnoticeable gaps in the onboarding process.
Aside from that, some of the most common causes include:
1. Not following up on checks
A one-time check when a driver starts isn’t enough to stay compliant. If a worker has a time-limited visa, you need to check their right to work again before it expires.
If you miss that window, your driver is working on an expired visa. This is enough to immediately put your business at risk, even if you did the initial check perfectly.
2. The agency assumption
Many logistics businesses hire through agencies and assume the agency handles the right to work checks for them. Whilst this is sometimes true, it’s not always the case, and can be a dangerous assumption to make.
If a worker is driving your routes and operating under your instruction, you are responsible for their right to work – regardless of who scouted them. If their status turns out to be invalid, the penalty will ultimately fall on you.
3. Inconsistency across sites
Businesses spread across multiple depots often have multiple site managers doing things in different ways. One depot might run tight checks. Another potentially relies on an outdated spreadsheet. Another might not bother checking agency workers at all.
However, the Home Office doesn’t distinguish between your sites. If illegal workers are found anywhere in your business, you are liable for it. Compliance is only as strong as your weakest depot.
What could a £45,000 fine do to your business?
For most small logistics businesses, a £45,000 fine alone is enough to cause serious damage. However, the fine is just the beginning:
Operational disruption
When illegal workers are discovered, they’re pulled from service immediately. This leaves gaps in your routes, at short notice. During peak periods, a disruption like that can be devastating.
Reputational damage
Every business fined for illegal working is added to the Home Office’s publicly available Illegal Working Penalties Report that is published every quarter.
If you’re engaged in, or looking for, contracts with major carriers, retailers, or logistics networks, that report immediately tells them your business is a risk. It can end up costing you partnerships that are worth far more than the original fine.
Sponsor licences
If your business recruits workers from outside of the UK, you need a sponsor licence. However, right to work penalties can put this licence at risk. If you receive a civil penalty, your licence could be subject for review, suspension, or at worst, revocation.
This means you could lose the ability to hire any worker that isn’t a UK national, for a minimum of 12 months. For businesses already struggling to fill driver shortages, this has the potential to set you back even further.
Criminal prosecution
Right to work penalties usually apply when it can be proven that the check was a mistake. But in cases where the Home Office has reason to believe that you knowingly hired someone that didn’t have their right to work, you could be left facing criminal prosecution.
This could leave you facing unlimited fines, prison sentences of up to 5 years, or in the most extreme cases, business closure.
How can you protect your business?
The best protection against right to work penalties is to carry out the check correctly, which means:
- Checking every worker before they run their first route
- Re-checking anyone whose right to work is time-limited before it expires
- Keeping clear records of every check you carry out
Doing this correctly builds a legal defence called a statutory excuse – which protects you from civil penalties even if a worker is later found out to be working illegally.
Which type of check do you need to do?
Not every check can be carried out for every worker. Factors like whether they’re a UK national or not can influence the type of check you carry out on them:
- Manual right to work check – valid for everyone
- Digital verification service – British and Irish citizens only
- Home Office online check – non-British and non-Irish citizens only
How to do a manual right to work check
- Ask the driver for the original documents from List A or List B of the Home Office’s acceptable documents list.
- Carefully check over the documents, making sure:
- Photos and dates of birth match the person who gave you the documents
- The documents are not expired
- There are no work restrictions that apply to the role
- The documents appear genuine and haven’t been altered
- If names are different across documents, you ask for supporting evidence (like a marriage certificate or deed poll)
- Make a copy of each document, including any supporting evidence, in a file that can’t be altered, and record the date the check was carried out to be kept with the copies.
Whenever you carry out a right to work check, all records must be kept for the duration of the worker’s contract, and two years after they leave. After that, they must be securely destroyed.
How can Wise protect you against right to work penalties?
Balancing compliance on top of everything else you’re responsible for is difficult, especially if your processes are manual. It can create gaps in your compliance that put your business at risk.
Wise builds compliance directly into the onboarding process to help keep your business protected against civil penalties.
- Automated right to work checks – Checks are done quickly and easily in partnership with TrustID.
- Customisable onboarding flows – Our team works with you to build onboarding journeys that collect every driver document you need.
- Unlimited document storage – all driver documents are stored securely in one place, for quick access.
Get in touch below to learn more about how Wise can support your logistics business.