Is the Right to Rent check free, and how do I do it?

Yes, the Right to Rent check can be free. For most occupants you use the gov.uk share-code service, which costs nothing, and recording a check you did yourself in Certaby is free too. Right to Rent is an England-only duty (there is no equivalent in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland), and in England you must check every adult occupier regardless of nationality, including British and Irish citizens.

How to do the free check with a share code:

1. Ask the occupant for a share code. They generate one for free at gov.uk/prove-right-to-rent. The code starts with a letter and looks like S-XXXX-XXXX.
2. Open 'View a tenant's right to rent' on gov.uk, enter the share code and the occupant's date of birth, then check the photo matches the person in front of you.
3. Note whether the result is List A (a continuous right, no follow-up) or List B (a time-limited right, which needs a follow-up check), and keep the reference shown.

British and Irish citizens cannot use the online share-code service, because their status is not held digitally. For them you either inspect original documents (for example a passport) with the person present, against the gov.uk acceptable-documents list, and take dated copies, which is free, or use a certified digital verification service, which checks a British or Irish passport remotely. Certaby's Right to Rent check by link does this with their ID on their phone, for £3.49 a tenant; you then confirm the photo and date of birth in the report are the tenant's (in person, on a video call, or from the face match the report shows), as the Home Office guidance asks.

Doing the check, and doing the record-keeping, are two different jobs. The free gov.uk check gives you the result; holding the 'statutory excuse' that protects you from a penalty means recording who you checked, how, on what date, the List A/B outcome, and then doing any List B follow-up before the time-limited excuse runs out (the later of the end of the occupant's permission and 12 months from the check), and retaining the evidence for the tenancy plus 12 months. That is the part agents most often get wrong. Certaby's Right to Rent recorder guides the free gov.uk check, then captures a statutory-excuse-grade record and works out the follow-up and retention dates for you, in the same inspection-ready file as the tenant's sanctions screening. The share-code route stays free; you pay only if you want the check done remotely by link.

Source: gov.uk: Prove your right to rent

Last updated 19 October 2026.