If your immigration permission does not prohibit work, you are allowed to take employment as described in Student work without getting any further approval or permission.
Your employer can, and in some cases must, check with the Home Office that you are allowed to work by contacting its business helpdesk or employers' helpline.
Employers have a legal obligation to check that you are allowed to work in the UK, so you must be able to provide evidence of this, usually by showing them your current passport and/or your current biometric residence permit or by sharing your digital status code - see Prove your right to work. Expired documents are usually not acceptable. For full details of the documents employers can accept, see the Home Office's guide to Acceptable right to work documents.
If you start a job on or after 6 April 2022, or if your permission expires on or after that date and you need to prove you have been granted new permission, your employer must use the online service. This means that they cannot rely on your physical documents. Instead, you must obtain a share code that you give to your employer so that they can carry out checks online.
Your employer will need to see information about the term and vacation dates for your course, so that it is clear to them and to the Home Office when you are allowed to work more than 10 or 20 hours a week. This information must be in one of the following formats:
- a printout from your institution's website showing the term and vacation dates for your course
- a copy letter or email that your institution has sent to you confirming your term and vacation dates
- a letter from your institution to your employer confirming these dates.
The Home Office has published guidance about the checks that employers must make and where they should go to find out whether a person is allowed to work.
You might not have your passport or biometric residence permit (BRP) if, for example, it is with the Home Office because you have applied to extend your immigration permission in the UK or if there are delays with providing your BRP. In these situations, employers can contact the Home Office to receive confirmation that you are permitted to work.
If you made your immigration application before your previous student immigration permission ended, you still have the right to work under the usual student conditions. However, a new employer must see evidence that you are currently in the UK with student immigration permission before allowing you to start work. The same can apply to your existing employer, who should have noted when your immigration permission ended and now wants to be sure that you still have the right to work. In these cases, your employer must receive confirmation from the Employer Checking Service of the Home Office
For some jobs, employers must also carry out criminal record checks before you can start work. The Home Office has information for employers about how to request these checks from countries other than the UK.
