Right to work checks widen on 1 October, DBS fees fall on the 5th

Two changes land in the first week of October, and both of them sit at the moment a locum starts work somewhere new. From 1 October 2026 the duty to check a person's right to work stops being an employees-only exercise. From 5 October 2026 the Disclosure and Barring Service drops the price of every check it sells. One adds a step before your first session at a new organisation. The other takes money off a bill you pay yourself.

What the 1 October change does

The expansion comes from the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. Watson Farley & Williams, writing on 5 August 2026, sets out the categories the new regime reaches: alongside people engaged under a contract of employment, who were already covered, it takes in people engaged under a worker's contract, people engaged as an individual sub-contractor, and people engaged through an online matching service that puts service providers in front of clients.

That is a short list and it repays reading as written. It does not say bank. It does not say casual or zero hours. Neither of the two law firm briefings that set out the categories mentions the NHS, locums or staffing agencies at all. What the change does is move the trigger away from the contract of employment and attach it to a wider set of engagements.

The duty belongs to the organisation, not to you. A practice, trust, pharmacy or agency that gets it wrong is the one exposed, which is why the request will come from their side and why the person making it will have very little room to be relaxed about the paperwork.

Where a self-employed locum is likely to sit

If you invoice a practice or a pharmacy directly in your own name, the category to look at is individual sub-contractor. On the reading the firms give, an engagement of that shape looks likely to be caught. Nothing in either briefing carves out clinical work, and nothing in them turns on how you are taxed or on whether the booking lasted a day or a term.

The honest position at the end of September is that law firm summaries do not settle the boundary. Home Office guidance does. Law firm trackers report that draft employer guidance was published on 16 July 2026 to come into force on 1 October 2026, with an updated draft code of practice on preventing illegal working out in June 2026 for the same date. Those are the documents that will decide whether a given booking is in scope, and they are worth a look when the final versions appear.

The practical effect is easier to predict than the legal one. More organisations will ask more people for right to work evidence at the point of booking, and a good number will ask everyone rather than work out case by case who is in scope, because asking everyone is the simpler internal rule. If you work across several organisations in a year, expect the question more often from October and expect it earlier in the process, before a rota is confirmed rather than on the morning you arrive.

The date is worth watching as well as diarising

Lewis Silkin, writing on 15 April 2026, flagged that the effective date of the new code of practice "may be subject to revision". The 1 October date has been widely reported since and is the one to plan around, but it is not the kind of date to be surprised by if it shifts. Plan for the change; do not build anything that breaks if it arrives a few weeks late.

DBS fees fall on 5 October

The Disclosure and Barring Service announced on 9 September 2026 that it is cutting what it charges from 5 October 2026.

Checks for volunteers stay free, and the DBS says the quality and rigour of the checks themselves are unchanged. The saving is small on a Basic or Standard check and meaningful on an Enhanced one, which is the level most clinical work requires: £8.50 a check. If a new organisation wants an Enhanced check from you in the last week of September and the start date allows it, the same check bought on or after 5 October costs less.

The Update Service is the part that earns its keep

For someone checked by one employer a decade, the fee cut is a footnote. For a locum who is checked by a new organisation every few months, the Update Service is the whole point. One subscription, £15 a year from 5 October, lets an organisation you give consent to check the status of your existing certificate online instead of putting you through a fresh application. That is the difference between one annual cost and a new check for each new place.

There is a catch worth knowing. The subscription has to be started within a set window that runs from the certificate's issue date, so a certificate that sits in a drawer for a few months can lose the option, and you are back to paying for a new check. The current window is set out in the DBS guidance. Check it on the day a new certificate arrives rather than the day an organisation asks.

What to check before 1 October

Three things, and none of them takes long.

Right to work evidence you can produce the same day. For most people that is a passport or a Home Office share code. Commentary on the new rules from Morgan Lewis notes that share codes are time limited, running 90 calendar days, so one you generated in August will not still be live for a start in October; it also notes that where an organisation uses a digital identity provider, that provider has to be on the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes register and approved for right to work checks. If a booking agent sends you to an unfamiliar identity app, that register is the thing to ask about.

Your DBS position. Know which level of certificate you hold, its issue date, whether you are on the Update Service, and when the subscription renews. A GP picking up sessions at a new practice and a pharmacist moving between branches for different employers face the same question from different directions: how quickly can you evidence this without paying for it again.

Registration and indemnity. A new organisation asking for right to work evidence will almost always ask for your registration number and proof of cover in the same email, and the answer that arrives in one reply is the one that gets you on the rota.

Keeping all of it in one place is the unglamorous fix: a compliance passport holds the certificate, the Update Service details, registration and indemnity dates together, so a new organisation can be answered the day it asks rather than the week after.

None of this is advice on your immigration status or your contracts. If a booking turns on whether you are a worker, a sub-contractor or genuinely in business on your own account, that is a question for your accountant or your defence organisation, and from 1 October it is a question more organisations will be asking out loud.

Sources

• DBS reduces fees for checks and Update Service from 5 October 2026 (GOV.UK, Disclosure and Barring Service, 9 September 2026)
• Right to work checks from 1 October 2026: what businesses need to know (Watson Farley & Williams, 5 August 2026)
• Expanded right to work checks may go live from 1 October 2026 (Lewis Silkin, 15 April 2026)
• Right to work compliance expands beyond employees: what businesses need to do before 1 October 2026 (DLA Piper, 2026)
• Expansion of UK right to work rules, part 3: digital verification, identity matching and onboarding (Morgan Lewis, August 2026)
• Right to work guidance and checklists for the October 2026 expansion (rightcheck.io, 2026, vendor commentary)