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 may issue, reduce or withdraw a penalty. Its decision depends on proof of a valid statutory excuse, which means 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, referral notice or Information Request from the Home Office about a worker's right to work. It explains what to do next and the timeline.

Regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority

By Mehmood RajokaLast reviewed 2 June 2026

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 applies per illegal worker, not per business. A single compliance visit that identifies several unchecked workers can therefore produce a six-figure total. The penalty is separate from any sponsor-licence enforcement action 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

→A civil penalty is separate from criminal prosecution under the Immigration Act for knowingly employing illegal workers. Both can apply to the same 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. Verify the exact percentage and qualifying window on the notice because 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. You must show that you carried out the prescribed right-to-work check before the worker started and kept the evidence in the correct format. The document must also have appeared genuine and matched the worker at the time. If those conditions are met, 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.

In the first 48 hours, preserve every record about the named worker and stop any communication that could undermine the response. The steps below are the first things to do.

→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 refer out.

Civil penalty response is regulated work where scope matters. Harveys Legal is regulated by the IAA at Level 1, which covers employer-side compliance advice and right to work process review. Objections, written representations and appeals need legal argument, which is above Level 1. We offer urgent triage and referral. Urgent triage, £295: written assessment, deadlines, evidence list and referral to a higher-level adviser or solicitor.

→Written assessment: where the business stands and whether a statutory excuse looks available on the records you hold

→Deadlines: the 28-day objection window and every other date on the notice, set out in writing

→Evidence list: the records the objection is likely to need, so nothing is lost or altered

→Referral: to a higher-level adviser or solicitor who can prepare and submit the objection, and later any County Court appeal. We take no fee from the firm we refer you to

→After the matter: right to work process review and audit so the same gap does not happen again

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

Urgent triage for a civil penalty notice.

Civil penalty work is governed by the 28-day deadline. Urgent triage is one fixed price, agreed before work starts.

→Urgent triage, £295: written assessment, deadlines, evidence list and referral to a higher-level adviser or solicitor

→Initial urgent call: usually within 1 working day of contact, to map the notice and the timeline

→Sponsor licence: where the employer also holds a sponsor licence, the assessment covers the licence risk too

→Right to work audit after the matter: £750 for up to 25 staff, £1,250 for 26 to 100 staff

→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.

No. Objections, written representations and County Court appeals need legal argument, which is above Harveys Legal's IAA Level 1 scope. Our urgent triage gives you a written assessment, the deadlines and an evidence list, and refers you to a higher-level adviser or solicitor with a clear brief. We take no fee from the firm we refer you to.

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

Sources: GOV.UK

GOV.UK: Code of practice on preventing illegal working (opens in new tab): Home Office statutory code used to assess employer civil penalty cases.

Regulated immigration advice

Harveys Legal is regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority.

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

About the author

This page was written by Mehmood Rajoka, founder of Harveys Legal, and fact-checked against the GOV.UK sources linked on the page. Harveys Legal Limited is regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, Reg No. F202537009.

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