From October, colleges are liable for people the HR teams never hired

Term has started, and colleges are still settling timetables and filling gaps in delivery. It’s a good moment to look at who’s teaching under subcontracted arrangements. Many colleges and further education institutions use subcontractors to broaden the opportunities available to students, bringing in guest lecturers, teachers with specialist expertise, and other expert provision. While these arrangements are designed to enhance the learning experience, upcoming changes to Right to Work checks mean that HR teams in further education will face a significantly greater responsibility for ensuring that all subcontracted provision is fully compliant.

From 1 October, Right to Work checks will apply to a much wider group of people than full-time employees. Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 brings in anyone working under a worker’s contract – including individual subcontractors. Colleges that get it wrong face a civil penalty of up to £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for a repeated breach within three years and there’s a criminal offence carrying up to five years in prison for anyone who knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that a person couldn’t be working legally.

The challenge for colleges is many of the people affected by these changes are recruited and managed by separate departments or faculties, meaning HR teams may not have a complete view of everyone employed.

Recruitment is happening outside HR teams

Specialist teachers often don’t come through traditional recruitment processes. A curriculum manager might approach someone they know or draw on industry contacts to bring in guest lecturers or teachers for niche subjects. Similarly, a college delivery manager may bring in a contracted assessor or invigilator to cover gaps in course delivery.  In each case, these are engagements that can sit with someone outside HR.

Under current law, in depth checks were only required on registered employees, but from October this will cover everyone. That makes it important to get the records in order now.

The clearest way to build a single, overarching HR view is to start with the payroll and accounts teams. Payroll and accounts payable should have a record of everyone being paid, meaning there is at least one record of them somewhere in the financial system.

From there, there are two key steps to take.

Start with the records you already have

Colleges should first work out who’s in scope. Someone genuinely in business on their own account, contracting directly with their own clients, sits outside the rules. However, that’s a narrower group than “self-employed” suggests, and a lecturer picking up work through a supply platform won’t qualify. What matters is the nature of the working arrangement, not what it says in the contract. Hourly-paid visiting lecturers and sessional assessors need reviewing carefully on that basis, and so do subcontracting arrangements, where getting the classification wrong is where the penalties sit.

Second, talk to the people responsible for hiring. Many may not be aware that these changes are coming, particularly because Right to Work checks have sat with HR teams historically. In September, that conversation is about agreeing how the new process will work. By November, this gap could result in a fine.

Colleges are unlikely to be starting from scratch. Every college should already maintain a single central record under the Keeping Children Safe in Education rules, with agency and supply staff listed on it.

The problem is that the Single Central Record was built for safeguarding, so it follows contact with under-18s. It may not, for example, cover subcontracted staff for an adults-only course. Those fall under the people coming into scope in October, and universities typically have no equivalent central register for them.

What a working system looks like

Once you know who’s in scope, the next question is how to demonstrate compliance. If your checks already run across several suppliers with no shared record, that arrangement won’t cope, because from October the responsibility applies to a much larger group of people.

A working system means having one record per person which is visible to whoever needs it. This is beneficial, because a site manager engaging a subcontractor can see whether the check has been completed, while HR has the same visibility without having to check in with multiple people for information.

The evidence of these changes matters as much as carrying them out. If the Home Office asks which checks were done for a subcontractor who spent three weeks on site, you want to be able to surface that in minutes, with the relevant dates and evidence all in place. That’s difficult when the proof is sitting with an external supplier, or a portal that you no longer use, rather than in internal systems.

September is the real deadline

There’s no transition period to get this right, and the check has to be completed before the person starts work. So, for anyone due to begin on 1 October, the deadline you’re working to is September.

The duty applies to engagements starting on or after 1 October. That means a sessional lecturer already working for you on 30 September doesn’t need a check the next day. What brings them in is whatever happens next – which might be a contract renewed for the new academic year.

In practice, this means the requirements arrive gradually, as contracts turn over and people move around. This can be harder to manage than a single deadline. Some colleges will decide to check everyone anyway, and that’s a defensible approach.

Whichever method chosen, organisations should start with the payment report, bring everyone into a clear record that HR can see and manage, and begin early enough to allow time for the process to work. 

By Jeanette Wheeler, Chief People Officer, MHR