Right to Rent share code: how to get one and what the agent actually checks

If you're not a British or Irish citizen, proving your right to rent in England now runs almost entirely through one GOV.UK service. You generate a short code from your own account, hand it to your landlord or agent, and they check it on a separate part of the same site. This is about proving a status you already have, not about qualifying for one — nothing here changes who's allowed to be in the UK, only how you show a landlord what the Home Office already has on record for you.

Who needs this (and who doesn't)

The right to rent scheme applies only in England. You do not need to prove your right to rent if you're renting in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland — those nations run under different housing legislation entirely.

Within England, British and Irish citizens don't use a share code at all — they prove their right to rent with a passport or other accepted document, checked in person by the landlord. A share code is for everyone else: generated from your own UKVI account and handed to your landlord or agent so they can check your status on a separate GOV.UK service. Every adult occupier needs to be checked before the tenancy starts, whether or not they're named on the tenancy agreement — a landlord can't lawfully check only the tenants they assume aren't British.

How to get the share code, step by step

You get your share code from the "Get a share code online" step of GOV.UK's right to rent service. To sign in, you need your date of birth plus one of: your Biometric Residence Permit details, your passport, or your national identity card — or you may already have a UKVI account if you've previously applied under the EU Settlement Scheme, used the UK Immigration: ID Check app, set up an eVisa account, or applied for a digital certificate of entitlement.

Once you're signed in, the service gives you a short code you give the agent — you can have it emailed to you, or note it down yourself. It's free, and it lasts 90 days from the date you generate it. You can use the same code as many times as you need within that window, and generate a fresh one whenever you need to.

What the agent sees when they check it

Your landlord or letting agent uses a separate GOV.UK service — "Check a tenant's right to rent in England" — entering your share code together with your date of birth. The check returns one of three outcomes: an unlimited right to rent, a right to rent that's time-limited to a specific date, or no confirmed right to rent. It doesn't hand them your wider immigration file — just the rent-relevant status. British and Irish citizens can't be checked this way at all, since they don't have share codes to give.

Landlords who complete the check correctly and keep a record of the result get a statutory excuse — protection against a civil penalty if your status later changes in a way they couldn't have known about.

The thing you cannot undo

Physical BRPs stopped counting as proof of your right to rent on 31 December 2024 — they were replaced by eVisas, held in your online UKVI account. That means your proof of status now lives in one place only. If something goes wrong with that account — a technical fault, incorrect details, or being unable to sign in at all — there's no card or paper document you can fall back on instead. The Home Office's own error-reporting service is explicit about this being the route to a fix, and gives itself five working days for most cases, up to fifteen working days for more complex ones. That delay runs on their clock, not yours, and it isn't something a landlord, an agent, or anyone else can shortcut.

What goes wrong

• Name or date of birth mismatches. If your eVisa still shows details from an old passport — because you've since renewed it, changed your name, or replaced it — you correct this through your UKVI account, and you'll need an identity document that proves the change. You cannot update your name or travel document while a visa application is still pending a decision.
• Account access problems. GOV.UK's own "Report an error with your eVisa" service exists specifically for: your eVisa details are wrong, you can view your eVisa but can't generate a share code, a technical error stops you viewing it, or your account was set up by the Home Office but you've never been able to sign in.
• Each person needing their own code. A share code proves one person's status. Every adult in the property — a partner, an adult child, a housemate — needs to generate and hand over their own; the Code of Practice is explicit that this applies regardless of whether they're named in the tenancy agreement. Children under 18 are excluded from the scheme, and a landlord isn't required to run a check the moment one turns 18 mid-tenancy — only at the next point a follow-up check is otherwise due.
• Timing against a fixed check window. If your right to rent is time-limited, the landlord's check has to happen in the 28 days before your tenancy starts — not months in advance. Given your share code is valid for 90 days, the tighter constraint in practice is usually this 28-day landlord-side window, not the code's own expiry.

Where this sits in the sequence

This is a paperwork step, not a house-hunting one — but it has to be sorted before viewings turn into an actual tenancy, because an agent won't move a referencing file forward without it. It sits alongside the wider referencing picture: if you're arriving with no UK credit history yet, that's a separate, larger obstacle with its own workarounds. If you're coming in on a Skilled Worker visa specifically, the rental market has its own timing traps that catch people well before right to rent becomes the issue.

Right to Rent is one item on a longer paperwork list that has to close out before a tenancy can start. A Blueprint puts it on the same timeline as your referencing, your schooling and the rest of your move — see what one looks like.