When conducting right to rent checks under the Immigration Act 2014, in order to achieve a statutory excuse, consideration must be given to the statutory code of practice under the Act.
From 25 May 2016, the statutory code of practice has been updated. Landlords must follow the revised version from now on.
At first glance, there aren’t any significant changes.
One new paragraph of interest is:
Landlords should take all reasonable steps to check the validity of the documents presented to them. Landlords will not be penalised, if, having taken all reasonable steps to check a document’s validity, they are fooled by a good forgery which appears to be genuine.
This has been a fear of many landlords and it’s good to see clarification.
Other minor changes include:
- In List A Group 1 the biometric immigration document has become biometric residence card and it can be current or expired (previously current).
- In the Group 2 list[^1], the driving licence is changed to a photo card driving licence.
- There are a number of additional documents added to the group 2 list.
- The line that used to say the landlord is not required to remove the tenant if they cease to have a right to rent has been removed – obviously in anticipation of the Immigration Act 2016.
In addition, there are are a number of grammatical changes throughout the document.
The updated statutory code of practice can be found here.
For anyone interested, we have produced a comparison of the previous (now archived) code practice text with the text of the current version.
Our right to rent guidance has been updated with links to the updated statutory code of practice.
