Right to Rent share codes: a landlord’s step-by-step guide

Many Right to Rent checks now use the tenant's share code: nine characters beginning with R, which you enter in the government's online checking service. The step that matters most comes at the end: save the result page, because that copy is your evidence you did the check.

Where share codes fit in a Right to Rent check

Before an adult occupies your property in England, you must still check they have the right to rent, and keep evidence you did. Tenants with digital immigration status (an eVisa, including EU settled or pre-settled status) now prove their status with a share code instead of physical documents. Biometric residence permits have been replaced by eVisas, so a physical BRP card is no longer part of the check. British and Irish citizens are the big exception: they can't generate codes, so for them you check their documents yourself or through a registered digital verification service, both covered in our full Right to Rent guide.

The check, step by step

1. The tenant generates the code. They use the government's “prove your right to rent” service, which produces a 9-character code starting with R. Make sure it's a right to rent code. A code starting with W is a right to work code, and a code starting with S is for other services. Neither can be accepted for a rent check.

2. You go to the official service. Search gov.uk for “view a tenant's right to rent” (the service lives at right-to-rent.service.gov.uk). It's free. Anything charging you, or any link sent to you in a message, is the wrong door. Looking at the result on the tenant's own phone doesn't count either: the Home Office code says you have to open it yourself, through the landlord's side of the service.

3. Enter the code and the tenant's date of birth. Those two items are all the service needs.

4. Match the photo. The result page shows the tenant's photograph and whether they can rent. Compare the photo to the person in front of you (or on the video call). Making that match is your responsibility as the landlord.

5. Save the result. Download or print the profile page and record the date of the check. The saved result is your evidence and what establishes the statutory excuse, because the share code itself expires.

The details that catch landlords out

Codes last 90 days, and that isn't how early you can check. Where the tenant's right to rent has a time limit, the check has to be done no earlier than 28 days before the tenancy starts. A tenant with no time limit can be checked at any point before you agree the tenancy. If a code has expired, don't improvise. A fresh one takes the tenant minutes to generate.

Check every adult who will live there. The civil penalty runs per person: up to £10,000 per occupier (£5,000 per lodger) for a first breach, and up to £20,000 per occupier (£10,000 per lodger) for a repeat within 3 years. Adults who aren't named on the agreement need checking too.

Time-limited results need a follow-up check. If the tenant's permission is time-limited, the service tells you, and gives the date the follow-up is due by. Put that date in your diary; letting it lapse silently is the classic mid-tenancy compliance failure, and the same pattern as an expiring certificate, covered in our mid-tenancy guide.

Keep the record for the tenancy plus one year. Statutory excuse evidence has a shelf life requirement, and “I definitely checked, but the screenshot is on an old phone” has lost landlords real money. (Right to rent is the odd one out here, as most landlord records need keeping far longer. See how long to keep each type of record.)

Where the evidence should live

The saved result page is a compliance document like any other, so it belongs in the property's file, dated, next to the gas certificate and the deposit prescribed information. Store it per tenancy, note any follow-up date it triggered, and it's one more line of the file that's simply done if a council or court ever asks. That filing habit, where every obligation produces a dated document in one place, is the whole game of landlord record-keeping now.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Right to Rent applies in England; always follow the current Home Office code of practice, which came into force on 1 October 2026.