Accommodation for foreign workers in Czechia: Ubyport, the house book and three working days

Under Act No. 326/1999 Coll. on the residence of foreign nationals, the accommodation provider must report a foreign national's accommodation to the Police of the Czech Republic within 3 working days. Providers for whom accommodation is a business activity report through the Ubyport web application run by the Foreign Police Service. The provider also keeps a house book and produces it on request.

Who the accommodation provider is, and when the employer becomes one

Under Act No. 326/1999 Coll., the accommodation provider is whoever provides accommodation to a foreign national. It makes no difference whether the place is a hotel, a guest house, a workers' hostel or a rented flat, nor whether accommodation is a business activity: the business case changes how the report is filed, not whether the duty exists.

For employers recruiting from third countries this carries one consequence that is regularly missed. An employer who houses workers, whether in a company hostel or in flats taken on lease, becomes the accommodation provider with every record keeping duty attached. That means the reporting deadline, the house book, and responsibility for its contents at inspection. It does not help that the HR department or an external property manager handles the paperwork, because the duty follows the provider, not the administrator.

Where the employer only introduces the worker to a landlord and the worker signs the lease directly, the landlord is the provider. Even then the employer has a practical reason to track the filing, because the worker's residence file rests on the proof of accommodation that landlord issues.

The three working day deadline and Ubyport

The reporting deadline under the residence act is 3 working days from the start of the accommodation. It runs from the moment the foreign national moves in, not from the signing of the lease and not from the first shift. For workers who land on a Friday evening and start on Monday, the clock is already running over the weekend and Wednesday is the last day.

For providers who run accommodation as a business, the Police of the Czech Republic operate the Ubyport web application. It replaces the paper registration forms and passes the data to the Foreign Police Service electronically. Registering the premises is a step taken in advance rather than on the day the first workers move in, because the deadline does not wait for the provider to appear in the system.

The second duty is the house book. The provider keeps it under the residence act, retains it for 6 years as a rule, and produces it to the Police of the Czech Republic on request. It records the details set by law: the identification of the person accommodated, the number and type of travel document, citizenship, and the dates of arrival and departure. The departure date is the entry most often missing, because the worker moves out and nobody closes the record.

An inspection at the provider starts with that book and with whether its entries match the people actually living in the building. An open record for a worker who moved out six months ago is a contradiction somebody has to explain: the book says he is accommodated there, the payroll file says he left the company. The departure date is therefore entered on the day the worker moves out, not at a half yearly tidy up of the files.

Accommodation as a condition of the residence file

The Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic lists proof of secured accommodation for the whole period of stay among the annexes to an employee card application. The worker's residence title therefore rests on the accommodation the employer arranges. The proof has to cover the whole period the card is applied for, not the first three months.

That reverses an order of steps employers often assume. The lease or the provider's confirmation is obtained before the application is lodged, not after the card is issued. How the recruitment side fits together is set out in the Czech employee card and the vacancy register, and the conditions for employers inside the guaranteed route in the Qualified Employee Programme in 2026. What Werklist handles on the employer side is described on the employers page.

A change of address follows the same rule as the first move in: the new provider reports within 3 working days and the previous one closes the house book record with a departure date. Employers who shift people between hostels during the year as workload moves are the ones who trip here, because the move reads as an operational detail while the records treat it as two separate filings.