Employing Illegal Delivery Drivers: £60,000 Fines, Prison and Director Bans Explained

Key Takeaways

• From 1 October 2026, section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 extends the illegal working rules to worker's contracts, individual sub-contractors and online matching services. It is confirmed law, commenced by SI 2026/683.
• The civil penalty starts at £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and £60,000 for a repeat breach. £60,000 is a ceiling, not the norm, but it applies per worker: three riders on a repeat breach start at £180,000.
• The civil penalty needs no knowledge. Your main defence is a statutory excuse, which comes from a prescribed right to work check before the work starts or, under extended liability, from meeting article 5B.
• Prison comes from a separate offence under section 21 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. It needs knowledge or reasonable cause to believe and carries up to five years. From 1 October 2026 it reaches anyone who directly engages a rider under the new categories, including an online matching service.
• The criminal offence does not follow extended liability. A main contractor, or a platform whose only link to a substitute is a substitution clause, can be fined under section 15A but not prosecuted under section 21 for that alone.
• The Home Office cannot ban directors. The courts do, or the Insolvency Service by undertaking, under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, after a conviction or an Insolvency Service investigation, for up to 15 years.
• Closure notices and licence reviews fall mainly on takeaways and restaurants, because they bite on employed staff and licensed premises.
• Platforms must check their riders and any substitute their rules allow. Where a takeaway uses its own riders and an app only takes the orders, the takeaway must check.
• The law follows the working arrangement, not the sector, so construction and logistics are covered exactly like food delivery.
• Our right to work check service sets up compliant checks, substitution controls and supply chain contract terms for every engagement from 1 October 2026.

Introduction

A Home Office video now circulating on Facebook puts it bluntly: "A £60,000 fine or 5 years in jail". It says that from 1 October responsibility for right to work checks will sit directly with employers in sectors such as food delivery and construction, and adds director disqualification. If you run a takeaway, manage a restaurant, direct a courier business or operate a delivery fleet, you need to know which of those could actually land on you.

The message bundles separate regimes together. Each is triggered by different conduct, needs a different level of proof and reaches a different part of the delivery chain.

This post maps each sanction to four positions: delivery platforms, restaurants and takeaways with their own riders, courier and last-mile firms using subcontracted drivers, and riders who rent, share or hand over their accounts. Then it sets out what protects each of them.

We published this on 23 September 2026 and updated it on 1 October 2026, when the rules came into force and the Home Office published its final Employer's Guide. The statute, the regulations, the codes and the guide are all now in force. If your question is whether a particular person is in scope at all, read our guide on whether you need a right to work check for a self-employed contractor alongside this one.

What the Home Office Message Actually Means

The figures are not new. The Home Office used the same list when it announced the gig economy crackdown on 30 March 2025.

Who Counts as the Employer in the Delivery Chain

Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 inserts section 14A into the 2006 Act, so that "in sections 15 to 24" employing someone includes engaging them under a worker's contract, engaging an individual sub-contractor, and an online matching service providing their details to customers. It also inserts section 15A, which treats a business further up a chain as employing whoever does the work. SI 2026/683, made on 24 June 2026, brings both into force on 1 October 2026.

Delivery Platforms

Many people assume an app such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats or Just Eat is an "online matching service". The Employer's Guide classifies that kind of platform differently. Its Example 3, a rider who logs into a delivery app and is paid per delivery, makes the platform the rider's employer as the engager of an individual sub-contractor. The guide's online matching service examples involve cleaners and electricians. Either way, from 1 October 2026 the platform must check the rider.

Two more examples settle the delivery questions. Under Example 9, a platform that lets riders substitute may be treated as the employer of the friend who does the deliveries. Under Example 14, where an app only takes orders and the takeaway uses its own delivery staff, the takeaway is liable and the app is not.

The main platforms already check voluntarily, and on 30 June 2025 agreed to increase facial verification and fraud detection because account sharing was still being abused. Since 1 October 2026 those checks are no longer voluntary.

Restaurants and Takeaways Using Their Own Riders

If your riders are employees, nothing changes. You have needed a statutory excuse for every employee who started on or after 29 February 2008.

The change reaches takeaways that pay riders per drop as self-employed. Your contract is with the customer, and the rider's contract is with you. That fits the statutory definition of an individual sub-contractor, which has no business exception of its own. The code and final guide treat a rider running a genuine independent courier business as outside scope, but otherwise they are in scope for engagements starting on or after 1 October 2026. So are riders on a worker's contract.

If you hand deliveries to a separate courier company, that company is the riders' employer. The guide's examples do not settle whether you are also caught by extended liability, but Annex C of the final guide draws the line between buying work for your own use and being contracted to provide work to a third party and using another business to fulfil it. You are contracted to deliver to your customer and use another business to do it, which points towards extended liability applying. We would put the article 5B terms (below) into that courier contract rather than rely on falling outside.

Courier, Parcel and Last-Mile Firms Using Subcontracted Drivers

A typical last-mile chain has a retailer, a carrier contracted to deliver its parcels, and a delivery partner that engages the drivers. The delivery partner is the direct employer. Its employees have been in scope since 2008, and its self-employed owner-drivers become individual sub-contractors from 1 October 2026 unless they run genuinely independent businesses.

The carrier sits under section 15A. Having passed contracted work down a chain, it can be treated as employing every driver who does the work, at any tier, even one it does not know about. Its statutory excuse comes not from checking drivers but from new article 5B of the 2007 Order, inserted by SI 2026/700: a written statement requiring set terms in its subcontract before any driver starts, and systems confirming the driver on the road is the person who was checked.

The guide's Example 10 puts a retailer buying distribution for its own operations out of scope. A retailer that has itself contracted to deliver to its customers is in the same position as the takeaway above, and the same Annex C test applies. The guide says the Home Office will normally look for the direct employer first.

Riders Renting, Sharing or Substituting Accounts

Under section 15A, a platform or business can be treated as employing whoever actually does the work. Whether the rider's contract allows substitution decides how it earns its excuse. Where it does, the business has a statutory excuse only if, before the work begins, it has processes (set out in article 5B(4) and the final guide) that check every substitute, never leave that check to the rider, block unverified substitutes, allow action against the rider, and verify identity throughout.

Where substitution is banned but a rider rents out the account anyway, the final guide says the Home Office will look at whether the account holder was properly checked and what was done against impersonation.

The account holder is not safe either. On a plain reading of section 14A, a rider who passes contracted work to someone else is engaging an individual sub-contractor. That could make them an employer in their own right, open to a penalty and, if they know the substitute cannot work, to prosecution. The final guide does not address this and it is untested, so treat it as a reading of the statute rather than settled practice.

The Civil Penalty: £45,000 or £60,000 per Worker

The Employer's Guide calls the civil penalty "the sanction applied in most routine cases". It needs no knowledge, and your main defence is a statutory excuse. Penalised employers can also be named in the Home Office's published list, and enforcement of an unpaid penalty can affect your credit. The codes of practice for employers set the figures.

A breach is a repeat where you had a penalty or warning notice for a breach in the previous three years, or committed a section 21 offence in that period. So £60,000 is the most you can be charged per worker, reached only by a repeat offender with no mitigation. One rule helps multi-site operators: where recruitment is devolved to each site, illegal workers found at different sites are not a repeat breach unless your central recruitment practices failed.

Which Code of Practice Prices the Breach

A breach before 1 October 2026 is priced under the code in force from 13 February 2024. A breach on or after that date is priced under the revised code, brought into force by regulation 2(11) of SI 2026/700. The date of the breach is the most recent evidence of the person working illegally, while your checks are judged against the code in force when you made them. The amounts are the same in both.

If a notice has already arrived, our guide on how to challenge an illegal working civil penalty notice covers objections, appeals and deadlines.

When Employing an Illegal Delivery Driver Becomes a Crime

Section 21 of the 2006 Act makes it an offence to employ someone knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that they are disqualified by their immigration status. The maximum on indictment is five years' imprisonment, a fine, or both, raised from two years by section 35 of the Immigration Act 2016 from 12 July 2016.

Under section 22, a company is treated as knowing what anyone responsible for an aspect of the engagement knows, such as an onboarding manager. Where the company offends with the consent or connivance of a director, manager or secretary, that person is guilty too. That is how a director faces prison personally.

We checked the statute on legislation.gov.uk, including amendments not yet in force. Section 48 does not amend section 21, and does not need to: section 14A applies to "sections 15 to 24", which includes section 21. Section 15A is narrower, applying only to sections 15, 16, 17, 23 and 24. So:

• Platforms can commit it for riders they engage directly from 1 October 2026, but not merely because a substitute worked under a substitution clause.
• Takeaways can commit it for employed riders now, and for self-employed or worker riders from 1 October 2026.
• Courier firms engaging drivers can commit it. A main carrier liable only through extended liability cannot, on that basis.
• Account holders may commit it if, as we read section 14A, they knowingly engage a substitute who cannot work. That is untested.

The GOV.UK page on penalties for employing illegal workers leads with the five-year figure, but prosecution is kept for serious cases.

Director Disqualification: How It Really Happens

The Home Office cannot ban a director. It shares information with the Insolvency Service, and bans come through the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 in one of three ways:

• After a conviction. Under section 2, a court convicting a director of an indictable offence connected with managing a company, which can include a section 21 offence committed in running it, can disqualify them for up to 15 years (five in a magistrates' court).
• After the company fails. Under section 6, where a company becomes insolvent or is dissolved and the director is unfit, the court must disqualify them for 2 to 15 years. It considers how far the director caused the company to breach legal requirements. The familiar pattern is an unpaid penalty followed by liquidation.
• In the public interest. Under section 8, the Secretary of State can seek a ban against a director, including of a company that is still trading.

A director can instead give a disqualification undertaking, with the same effect. Breaching a ban is a criminal offence.

Closure Notices and Compliance Orders

Under Schedule 6 to the Immigration Act 2016, a chief immigration officer can close premises where an employer there is employing an illegal worker and the employer, or a connected person such as a director, has a section 21 conviction, a civil penalty in the last three years, or an unpaid penalty. The notice lasts up to 24 hours, or 48 hours if issued or extended by an immigration inspector, and the court can keep it in force for up to 14 more days if it adjourns the hearing. It cannot be issued if you show a statutory excuse for each worker.

The magistrates' court must hear an application for a compliance order within 48 hours. The order can restrict the premises, require right to work checks and allow inspections for up to 12 months, extendable to 24 months in total.

Two points are easy to miss. Schedule 6 still defines employment as a contract of service or apprenticeship, and section 48 did not change that, so closure is a real risk for a takeaway with employed staff but not a tool against a platform's self-employed riders. And the connected person rule means a closure can rest on a director's record, not just the company's.

Licences: Premises, Personal and Sponsor

The section 182 guidance under the Licensing Act 2003, updated in September 2026, lists employing someone disqualified by immigration status among the criminal uses of premises to be treated particularly seriously. These licensing rules apply in England and Wales.

Under Part 3 of the sponsor guidance (version 08/26), one first-breach penalty that stands after objection and appeal means the Home Office may revoke. If a first-breach penalty below the maximum is not paid, or put on an instalment plan, within 29 days of liability being confirmed, or you default on the plan, it will. Two or more penalties during the licence mean it normally will, and two or more with one left at the maximum mean it will. Employing someone without permission to work and without proper checks is a ground for normal revocation even without a penalty, and a warning notice in the last five years can count against you. Revocation also cuts short sponsored staff's permission, and our sponsor licence suspension service acts fast when a licence is threatened.

It Is Not About Sectors: The Rules Follow the Arrangement

The video names food delivery and construction, but the law names no sectors. Section 14A turns on the working arrangement and section 15A on the contract chain. The guide's own examples cover construction, cleaning, hospitality and logistics.

Nor is every self-employed rider in scope. The definition of a worker's contract excludes someone whose client is a customer of their own business, and the revised code and final guide exclude anyone running an independent business, in their own name or through their own company, who contracts directly with clients. A rider who only works through an app and runs no business of their own is unlikely to pass that test. Our self-employed contractor guide, linked above, walks through it.

There is also a commencement carve-out. The revised code and final guide say a civil penalty for the new categories may only be imposed where the engagement commenced on or after 1 October 2026, and that the article 5B requirements apply to contracts entered into from that date. Four limits apply:

• It comes from the code and guidance. Neither section 48 nor SI 2026/683 contains a transitional provision.
• It does nothing for employees, or for a rider labelled self-employed who is really an employee.
• It concerns civil penalties only. On our reading, it is no comfort to anyone who knowingly keeps using a rider who cannot work after 1 October 2026. And where each delivery is accepted as a separate contract, each may count as a new engagement.
• Licensed sponsors must check any worker they sponsor, whatever the arrangement.

What Protects You, Position by Position

A statutory excuse defeats the civil penalty and also blocks a closure notice. The final Employer's Guide to right to work checks, published on 1 October 2026, sets out how to get one.

The Prescribed Check Itself

There are three prescribed checks: a manual document check, a Home Office online check using a share code, and a check through a registered digital verification service provider, used mainly for British and Irish passports and for facial matching. You can delegate the check to your own staff, but the liability stays with you, and a check a rider does on their own substitute gives you nothing. Where someone has a pending application or appeal, the Employer Checking Service applies. Our free Right to Work Check tool shows which check fits which person.

The Article 5B Contract Terms

Where you pass delivery work down a chain, article 5B(2) requires your written statement to put six terms into the subcontract before work begins:

• a duty on the subcontractor to meet the right to work requirements for every driver, including substitutes
• a ban on further subcontracting without your written consent, with the same checks passed down
• your right to audit its compliance whenever you ask
• enforcement provisions against the subcontractor if it engages an illegal worker without an excuse
• a duty on it to include enforcement terms against a driver it knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is working illegally
• a duty to cooperate with any Home Office investigation, including details of every business in the chain

You can rely on subcontractors' assurances only after reasonable steps to test them, and terms nobody enforces will not be enough. Our free HR Compliance Audit is a quick way to see where you stand.

What the Rider Faces

Working illegally is an offence under section 24B of the Immigration Act 1971 where the person knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, they cannot work, including self-employed work. The maximum in England and Wales is six months' imprisonment and an unlimited fine, and earnings can be confiscated as proceeds of crime. Riders on asylum support can lose it. We will cover account renting and its effect on a rider's future visa applications in a separate post.

What Is Confirmed Law, and When It Took Effect

For the enforcement figures behind all this, see our post on immigration raids and £74 million in fines.

How Can WorkPermitCloud Help?

Now the rules are in force, the most valuable step is making sure every rider or driver you take on is checked correctly first time. Our right to work check service sets up the right check for each person, the substitution controls platforms and takeaways need, and the article 5B terms for courier and last-mile contracts.

For a wider review, our Home Office compliance audit tests your checks, records and contracts before an enforcement visit does. If a notice has already arrived, our civil penalty service handles objections and appeals within the deadlines.

Conclusion

The £60,000 and five-year figures are real, but they sit at the top of two different ladders. The civil penalty needs no knowledge and ends nearly every case, usually below the maximum. Prison needs knowledge or reasonable cause to believe. Director bans come through the courts, and closures and licence reviews fall mostly on businesses with employed staff and licensed premises.

From 1 October 2026 each link in the chain has an owner: platforms, takeaways and courier firms check the people they engage, and the businesses above them rely on contract terms and identity controls. A check made before the first delivery protects you against both the penalty and closure.

Glossary