Compliance · Civil penalty response

Civil penalty for illegal working — your 28-day response window.

Direct answer

If the Home Office serves your business with a civil penalty notice for employing someone without permission to work in the UK, you have 28 days to respond. The current maximum penalty is up to £60,000 per illegal worker. The Home Office decides whether to issue a penalty, reduce it, or withdraw it based on whether you can show a valid statutory excuse — i.e. that you carried out the prescribed right-to-work checks correctly before the worker started. If a penalty is issued, your options are to pay, to object within 28 days, or — if the objection fails — to appeal to the County Court. The first 48 hours after a notice arrives are the most important: this is when the response strategy is set.

Who this applies to: UK employers who have received a civil penalty notice, a referral notice, or an Information Request from the Home Office regarding a worker's right to work — and need to know what to do next, in what order, and on what timeline.

Regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority

The numbers

What the Home Office can issue you with.

The civil penalty regime for illegal working was significantly uplifted in early 2024. The current maximum penalty is set per illegal worker, not per business — so a single compliance visit that identifies multiple unchecked workers can produce a six-figure total within days. The penalty is in addition to any sponsor-licence enforcement action (downgrade, suspension, revocation) that may follow.

→Maximum civil penalty: up to £60,000 per illegal worker

→Repeat breaches attract higher penalties than first breaches — the exact split should be verified against current Home Office guidance before relying on a specific figure

→Penalty is per worker — multiple unchecked workers means multiple penalties at the same visit

→Civil penalty is separate from criminal prosecution under the Immigration Act for knowingly employing illegal workers — both can apply to the same set of facts

→Civil penalties can sit alongside sponsor licence enforcement (B-rating, suspension, revocation) if you also hold a sponsor licence

The response timeline

The 28-day clock starts the day the notice lands.

Day 0 — Civil Penalty Notice (or Referral Notice) is served

The notice is typically delivered by post or hand-delivered after a compliance visit. The clock runs from the date on the notice, not the date you open it.

Clock starts

Within 28 days — your response is due

You must choose one of three responses: pay the penalty, object to the Home Office, or do nothing (in which case the penalty becomes enforceable as a debt).

Decision required

Objection — within 28 days

You set out why the penalty should be cancelled, reduced, or treated as having a statutory excuse. The Home Office reconsiders the decision.

Submit to Home Office

Appeal — within 28 days of objection refusal

If the objection is refused, the next step is a County Court appeal. This is regulated court work that sits outside IAA Level 1 scope — Harveys would refer you to an appropriately authorised representative.

County Court route

Fast-payment reduction

The Home Office can offer a fast-payment reduction for early settlement. The exact percentage and qualifying window should be verified on the notice itself — they are case-specific.

May apply

Always verify the current civil penalty timelines and figures against the notice itself and the Home Office Code of Practice on preventing illegal working. The numbers above reflect the published position at the time of last review.

The statutory excuse

The thing that decides whether a penalty stands.

The statutory excuse is the legal defence built into the illegal-working regime. If you can demonstrate that you carried out a prescribed right-to-work check on the worker before they started, in the correct format, and retained the evidence — and the document presented at the time appeared genuine and matched the worker — then the Home Office cannot impose a civil penalty even if the worker is later found to be in the UK unlawfully.

→Manual right-to-work check — on an in-date original document from the published list, photographed or scanned and dated by you

→Online right-to-work check — using a worker-generated share code through the gov.uk service, with the result retained

→Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT) check — using a certified Identity Service Provider for British and Irish citizens with valid passports

→The check must be done before employment starts — a check carried out after the worker has started cannot retroactively establish the statutory excuse

→Follow-up checks are required for workers whose right to work is time-limited (e.g. visa expiry, sponsorship change)

What to do in the first 48 hours

The order of operations when a notice arrives.

The single most useful thing you can do in the first 48 hours is preserve every record relevant to the named worker — and stop any communications that could undermine the response. Below is the structured first response we walk new clients through.

→Pull the personnel file for every named worker on the notice — passport copy, visa copy, share code result, RTW check date, contract, payroll record

→Lock down the records — do not edit, backfill, or 'tidy up' the file. If a record is missing, document the gap. Backfilled records are a far worse problem than missing ones.

→Identify who carried out the RTW check at the time, when, and on what document

→Diary the 28-day deadline immediately — do not assume the timeline is flexible

→Take regulated advice before making any written or verbal submission to the Home Office — including casual responses to follow-up emails or phone calls from a compliance officer

What Harveys can do within IAA Level 1 scope

What we help with — and what we will refer out.

Civil penalty response is exactly the kind of regulated work where scope matters. Harveys Legal is regulated by the IAA at Level 1, which covers employer-side compliance advice, RTW process review, and objection preparation. Court representation is a higher-level matter.

→Objection preparation — drafting and submitting the structured objection to the Home Office within the 28-day window

→Right-to-work process review — identifying whether a statutory excuse was established at the time, and fixing the process going forward

→Mock audit and document review — surfacing the gaps a compliance officer is most likely to focus on

→Sponsor licence implications — civil penalties commonly trigger parallel sponsor-licence enforcement; we manage both threads in the same engagement

→Referral-out — if the matter requires County Court appeal representation, or sits outside Level 1 scope for any other reason, we identify an appropriately authorised representative and brief them on the file

What goes wrong

The five civil penalty response mistakes we see most often.

→Treating the notice as informational and missing the 28-day clock — at which point the penalty becomes an enforceable debt regardless of any statutory excuse

→Backfilling missing right-to-work records before objecting — which is identifiable on examination and turns a defendable position into an indefensible one

→Responding to follow-up emails or phone calls from the Home Office without regulated advice — informal comments routinely end up quoted back in the final decision

→Paying the penalty quickly to make it go away, without checking whether a statutory excuse is available — paying does not stop sponsor-licence enforcement

→Forgetting that a civil penalty triggers a sponsor-licence compliance review if you also hold a sponsor licence — and treating the two threads as separate problems

How Harveys helps

The engagement structure for an urgent civil penalty matter.

Civil penalty work is time-bound by the 28-day clock. We structure the engagement around that clock — clear scope, clear fee basis, and a clear handoff point if the matter needs higher-level representation.

→Initial urgent consultation — within 24 hours of contact, to map the notice, the timeline, and the response strategy

→Statutory excuse review — structured review of the named worker's right-to-work file and the surrounding process

→Objection preparation and submission — drafted and filed within the 28-day window

→Sponsor licence parallel response — where the employer holds a sponsor licence, managed in the same engagement

→All work delivered under IAA Level 1 regulation — Regulation No. F202537009. Higher-level work is referred out with a clear brief.

Common questions

Questions employers ask us.

Up to £60,000 per illegal worker. Repeat breaches attract higher penalties than first breaches. The maximum is set per worker, not per business — so a single compliance visit that identifies several unchecked workers can produce a six-figure total. Always check the exact figure on the notice itself and verify against current Home Office guidance.

28 days from the date on the notice. Within this window you must either pay, object, or — if no action is taken — the penalty becomes enforceable as a debt. The clock does not pause while you take advice, find documents, or correspond informally with the Home Office.

It is the legal defence built into the illegal-working regime. If you can show you carried out a prescribed right-to-work check on the worker before they started — using a manual document check, an online share code check, or a certified IDVT digital check — and retained the evidence, then the Home Office cannot impose a civil penalty even if the worker is later found to be in the UK unlawfully. The check has to be in the right form, before the worker started, and on file.

Not without taking advice first. The Home Office may offer a fast-payment reduction, which can look attractive — but paying the penalty does not stop the sponsor-licence enforcement action that often runs in parallel, and it forecloses your statutory-excuse objection. The right sequence is almost always to take advice, identify whether a statutory excuse exists, and only then make the payment decision.

Court representation sits outside Harveys Legal's IAA Level 1 scope. We can prepare and submit the Home Office objection — which is the regulated administrative response — and if the objection fails and a County Court appeal is the next step, we refer you to an appropriately authorised representative and brief them on the file we have built.

Yes — almost always. A civil penalty for illegal working is a significant compliance signal for any business that also holds a sponsor licence. The Home Office routinely opens a parallel sponsor-licence compliance review when a civil penalty is issued. Both threads need to be managed together. Treating the two separately is one of the most common mistakes we see.

Related services & resources

IAA

Regulated immigration advice

Harveys Legal is regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority.

Firm Reg No. F202537009. Verify on the IAA register before engagement.

Civil penalty notice in hand? The 28-day clock is already running.

Book an urgent consultation. We will map the notice, the timeline, and the right next step — including whether your matter is one we can handle inside Level 1 scope or one we need to refer onward. Harveys Legal supports immigration applications, sponsor compliance preparation and related legal processes. Final decisions remain with the Home Office or relevant decision-maker.

Book a Consultation →Review your RTW process

Harveys Legal supports immigration applications, sponsor compliance preparation and related legal processes. Final decisions remain with the Home Office or the relevant decision-maker.