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TUPE (the Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment regulations) automatically moves an employee's existing contract to a new employer when a business or service changes hands — but it does not carry over their right to work check. The new employer still has to verify right to work from scratch, on the transfer date.
What TUPE does and doesn't cover
TUPE preserves continuity of employment, pay, and most contractual terms. It does not preserve the paperwork trail behind a right to work check — a receiving employer who simply inherits an old personnel file without re-checking status is not protected if that check turns out to be outdated or was never done properly.
What Employee Liability Information does and doesn't tell you
Before a transfer, the outgoing employer is required to hand over Employee Liability Information — a summary covering identity, length of service, terms and conditions, and any live disciplinary or grievance matters. It's easy to assume this satisfies your right to work due diligence, but it doesn't: ELI is an employment-law disclosure obligation, not an immigration one, and it typically won't include the underlying share code results, document copies, or repeat-check dates you need. Ask for that evidence separately and explicitly during due diligence, rather than treating the standard ELI pack as complete.
Right to work checks after a transfer
Run a fresh right to work check via share code for every transferring employee whose immigration status is held digitally, on or before the transfer date. For anyone with time-limited permission, note the same repeat-check date rules that would apply to any other hire.
Sequencing the checks around the transfer date
In practice, most transfers don't allow weeks of lead time, so plan the check timeline deliberately rather than leaving it to whoever picks up the personnel files after completion.
- Before the transfer date: request right to work evidence for every transferring employee from the outgoing employer, separately from the standard ELI disclosure, and flag any gaps immediately rather than at completion.
- On or before the transfer date: run your own fresh check for anyone whose evidence is missing, incomplete, or based on a document type you can no longer independently verify.
- Immediately after the transfer date: open a right to work file under your own organisation for every transferring employee, even where the outgoing employer's check looks sound — the record needs to exist under your name, not theirs.
If transferred staff include sponsored workers
A TUPE transfer involving a sponsored worker is a reportable event — the receiving sponsor licence holder needs to assign a new Certificate of Sponsorship and update the Sponsor Management System, not just carry the person over administratively. Missing this step is a genuine compliance gap, not a technicality.
If the receiving employer doesn't hold a sponsor licence
A business that has never sponsored workers before can find itself inheriting sponsored employees through a TUPE transfer it didn't fully anticipate at contract-bid stage. In that situation, sponsorship doesn't transfer automatically the way the employment contract does — you generally need to secure your own sponsor licence, or an appropriate arrangement under Home Office sponsor guidance for a change of ownership, within a defined window of the transfer. Treat this as a live risk to price into any bid for outsourced contracts (facilities management, catering, care provision) where the incumbent's workforce includes sponsored staff, and check the current time limits and process on GOV.UK well before the transfer date rather than after it.
Sectors where this comes up most
TUPE-driven right to work risk clusters in sectors that rely heavily on outsourced or re-tendered contracts with a high proportion of migrant labour — cleaning and facilities management, catering, and adult social care are the recurring examples. In care specifically, a change of provider on a local authority or NHS contract can move a large cohort of sponsored care workers in one transfer event; our guides on care worker sponsorship rules and sponsor licence compliance for care providers cover the wider obligations that sit alongside the transfer-specific duties described here.
Common mistakes
- Assuming that because employment continues without a break, no new right to work check is legally required — the check obligation attaches to the new employer, not the continuity of the job.
- Relying on due diligence documents produced for a commercial or financial purpose as if they were immigration compliance evidence.
- Leaving sponsored worker CoS reassignment until a routine SMS review, rather than treating it as time-critical from the transfer date.
- Not building an indemnity or warranty into the transfer agreement covering the accuracy of the outgoing employer's right to work records, leaving no commercial recourse if their checks turn out to have been wrong.
FAQ
Does TUPE change the sponsored worker's visa conditions?
Not automatically, but the new sponsor must formally take on sponsorship — this needs its own CoS and SMS record, distinct from the transferring employment contract.
What if the outgoing employer never actually checked right to work correctly?
The receiving employer isn't protected by an inherited but flawed check — run a fresh one rather than relying on someone else's paperwork.
Can we ask the outgoing employer to indemnify us for right to work problems we discover after the transfer?
You can negotiate a contractual indemnity, and it's worth doing on any transfer with a meaningful migrant workforce — but it protects you commercially, not legally, since the civil penalty and reporting obligations still sit with whoever is the employer on the day the issue is found.
Related: Right to Work Share Codes · Sponsor compliance software · Sponsor Licence Compliance for Care Providers
GOV.UK references: TUPE: employee transfers and takeovers · Sponsor duties and compliance guidance
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