There is a category of case that looks identical every time.
The company hired a foreign national correctly. The permit was there, the contract was there, everything checked and filed. Two years passed. The person is still working, nothing changed — and precisely because nothing changed, nobody opened the file again.
Somewhere in that period, one of the documents expired.
Lawful employment of a foreign national is not a state you achieve. It is a state you maintain. That single sentence explains most of the breaches inspections find in companies acting in good faith.
Why it happens at all
Because there is more than one deadline, and they run independently.
The document authorising work has an end date.
The residence title — visa or residence card — has its own, usually different.
The passport has a third, which nobody thinks about until it becomes the problem.
The employment contract has a fourth, if it is fixed-term.
These four dates are not synchronised and there is no reason they would be. It is enough for one of the first two to lapse and the employment stops meeting the requirements, even though the remaining documents are perfectly in order.
An employee with a valid work permit and an expired residence card is working illegally. The file contains a current document, so everything looks fine. That is exactly the trap.
Whose job is it to watch the dates?
Formally, the obligation to entrust work lawfully sits with the employer. Not the employee.
In practice companies assume the reverse: that the foreign national knows when their document expires and will handle it. That assumption fails for three reasons.
First, nobody knows the procedure who has not done it before — and at the first renewal, everybody is doing it for the first time.
Second, the application must be filed before the deadline passes, not after. Someone who realises on the expiry date is already late.
Third, the consequences fall on the company, even where the omission was the employee’s. During an inspection that distinction carries no weight.
What a timely application does and does not do
This mechanism is worth understanding properly, because it is a source of false comfort in both directions.
If the foreign national files a residence application within the deadline and the application is free of formal defects, residence is generally treated as lawful until a decision is issued. A stamp confirming the filing goes into the passport.
That is where the simple part ends. The stamp concerns residence. Whether work may be performed during the waiting period depends on the type of application, the previous basis for working, and the specific circumstances. It is not automatic and does not operate identically in every case.
This is where the costly mistake is easiest. Companies see the stamp, treat the matter as closed, and carry on. The stamp is not the answer to the question about the right to work — it is the answer to the question about residence.
When to start
Not a month before. That is already crisis mode.
Six months before — the first signal. This is where you decide whether the engagement continues at all, and where there is time to collect documents from the employee calmly. Usually the longest stage, because some items must be obtained from abroad or translated.
Three months before — the set should be ready to file.
Two months before — filed.
That schedule looks excessively cautious right up until the moment you discover that one certificate takes four weeks to issue.
One caveat: earlier is better, but not always unlimited. Some procedures have an earliest permissible filing date. Worth checking for the specific route.
When the deadline has already passed
It happens. What matters is not making it worse.
Remove the person from work. This is the first action, not the last. Every further day is another day of breach — and an ongoing state is assessed differently from a concluded one.
Establish exactly what expired. Residence, work, or both. That determines which routes remain available, and some remedial paths close once lawful residence is lost.
Do not back-date documents. That converts an administrative problem into an entirely different category of problem.
Do not wait for it to resolve itself. It will not, and each week narrows the list of available options.
Building a mechanism so it does not recur
You do not need a system or an external provider. You need one list and one owner.
One table covering every foreign national in the company. Columns: name, basis of stay and its expiry, basis for work and its expiry, passport expiry.
Sorted by nearest date. Not alphabetically — by date. The point is that the most urgent case is always at the top.
A reminder six months before each date, in a named person’s calendar, not “in the company.”
A review once a month. Fifteen minutes is enough if the table is current.
A rule: any change to working conditions triggers a document check. Promotion, pay rise, change of role, change of hours. This closes the second gap alongside expiry — because a permit can stop matching reality long before its end date.
The exposure
Entrusting work without the required authorisation carries a fine, and an inspector may impose a penalty on the spot without going to court.
The multiplier is what matters. Penalties attach to the person, not to the inspection. If documents lapsed for three people because nobody kept a list, that is three separate matters.
And there is the operational cost, which usually hurts more than the figure: the employee cannot enter the site tomorrow. It makes no difference that they are trained, embedded and needed. A replacement has to be found immediately, and rebuilding the position takes months.
Deadlines, procedures and the effects of filing an application change. Verify the current position on a specific case.
Do this today
Open a spreadsheet and list every foreign national employed by the company, with two dates against each: the end of the basis of stay and the end of the basis for work. Separately, in two columns.
If for any person you cannot fill in both dates from a document — that is the first thing to check.
If any date falls within the next six months — that is the second.
Would rather not track this by hand? Get in touch — deadline monitoring and starting procedures early is precisely the part we take over.