Evidence you can show an inspector,
for under a tenner.
Up to five checks on each referee — the address, the employer's record at Companies House, the dates, and the sender checks the referee's domain publishes. Each result carries the evidence behind it, and the report is issued minutes after the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed.
CONSENT · REFEREE OUTREACH · REMINDERS · REPORT
11 Aug 2026
| Referee | Employer | Dates | Authenticity | Response | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Julia Hartley Meadowbrook Care Ltd | Match | Active | Consistent | Pass | Replied |
Peter Rowe Rowe Domiciliary Care Ltd | Free webmail | Active | Differs | Pass | Replied |
- Match
- Employer
- Active
- Dates
- Consistent
- Authenticity
- Pass
- Response
- Replied
- Free webmail
- Employer
- Active
- Dates
- Differs
- Authenticity
- Pass
- Response
- Replied
- reply from
- peter.rowe1962@gmail.com← not a company address
- dates (candidate)
- Jun 2021 – Dec 2022
- dates (referee)
- Sep 2021 – Dec 2022← three months apart
Minutes, not days
The five checks are automated — public company records, domain and mail records, a date comparison, and whether a reply arrived at all. Nothing joins a queue and nobody reads it by hand. The only thing a check ever waits for is a referee.
- last referee replied
- 3 Aug 2026 · 17:03
- closing date reached
- 11 Aug 2026 · 12:02
- report issued
- 11 Aug 2026 · 12:04← 2 minutes
Three of the five checks read a record you can look up without us
Companies House
The public register of UK companies
MEADOWBROOK CARE LTD · 05512930 · active
Domain registries
Who owns the address, and since when
meadowbrookcare.co.uk · registered 19 years ago
Mail records
Whether that domain takes company email
mail accepted at meadowbrookcare.co.uk
Email authenticity
Whether the referee's domain publishes the sender checks that stop mail being sent in its name.
reply from j.hartley@meadowbrookcare.co.uk · sender checks passed
We are new, so there is no wall of customer logos on this page and no review score — we have not earned either yet. What we have is a report that shows its own working, line by line, against records you can open yourself.
Four steps. You are only in the first one.
Step through it. Every line on the right is from the same example check, at the time it actually happened.
Three fields, about a minute. This is the only part you are in.
Name, email, role. Referees are optional.
No CV, no date of birth, no identity documents. The candidate names their own referees — unless you already hold them and choose to enter them yourself.
- candidate
- Aleksandra Nowak
- role
- Care Assistant
- aleksandra.nowak@example.com
- raised by
- Susan Bennett · 28 Jul 2026 · 10:14
Up to five checks on each referee
Each one produces a result and the evidence behind it. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is a score.
How each check works- 01
Referee email
Whether the address belongs to the employer's own domain, or is a free webmail account.
- 02
Employer record
Whether there is a registered company at Companies House matching the employer named, and whether it is active.
- 03
Employment dates
Whether the dates the referee gave agree with the dates the candidate stated, within 45 days.
- 04
Email authenticity
Whether the referee's domain publishes the sender checks that stop mail being sent in its name.
- 05
Response
Whether the referee answered using the link we emailed to them. A referee who never answers is recorded as an outcome.
CQC-regulated?
See what Regulation 19 expects from referencesMost references are never checked. Yours take one click.
A form comes back, it reads fine, it goes on the file. Nobody running a small team has the afternoon it takes to do more than that — so the reference gets taken on trust, and what it is worth is never established either way.
of more than 1,000 UK companies surveyed by the BBC with the Federation of Small Businesses found employees whose references did not stand up when checked.
buys a commercial reference service with a live operator, a working website, and a phone number that answers in the company’s name. A returned form looks the same either way.
companies get registered at Companies House with a reference as the only thing behind them. Confirming a company exists is not the same as checking the reference.
A phone call or a two-line email reply tells you a form came back. It never establishes who answered it. If you are a team of twelve, one hire you cannot stand behind is not a statistic. It is your quarter.
- 5
- checks on every professional referee
- Up to 3
- reminders, sent in the first week, by us
- Minutes
- to the finished report, once the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed
- 0
- accounts for your candidate or their referees
- 2
- public sources, read by three of the five checks
Neither of the big two will tell you what they charge
If you hire a handful of people a year, that is the whole problem. Three rows decide it:
| PreHire | RefNow | Zinc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy without talking to sales | Yes | Yes, 5-credit minimum | Yes, for small teams |
| Verifies the referee is real | Yes, with evidence | Not stated | Not stated |
| Credit back if no referee replies | Yes, automatic | Not stated | Not stated |
Your next hire’s reference is either checked, or taken on trust
Run a real check on a real candidate and keep the report. Your first check is free — one free check per company email domain.