The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals ……………………………………………………………Policy News Journal
available. The payment of the levy would likely tip such employers towards adopting the apprenticeship training route as opposed to the alternatives available to them. For some businesses, they had already begun to increase their use of apprenticeships but the levy was likely to accelerate this uptake. An indicative estimate suggests that a substantial share of employers fell into this group; Concerns relating to how a sufficiently large number of apprentices (to allow them to fully utilise their levy payment) could be trained – for many employers, especially those that engaged in relatively low cost apprenticeships (e.g. in hospitality, customer service, health and social care) they looked set to incur a relatively large levy liability which would require considerable numbers of apprentices to be trained to fully utilise the levy. Such employers expressed concern about having the capacity to expand their apprenticeships to the level required to reclaim their levy in full. A relatively small proportion of employers fell into this group; Writing off the levy payment and absorbing the cost in the bottom line of the company’s accounts – where employers did not see a way to reclaim their full levy payment there was recognition that the cost would need to be reflected in the management accounts and often the cost would be recorded against the training or HR department of the business. Some would accept the levy payment as a sunk cost but for others they expected the cost to be offset against their overall training budget. A relatively small share of employers fell into this group. After expressing their initial reactions to the levy, employers were asked to consider in more detail how they might adapt their behaviour once the levy was implemented. Amongst the more detailed responses, employers expressed the following: expanding the range of occupations that could be trained via an apprenticeship; providing apprenticeships at higher levels; continuing to use apprenticeships to train their existing staff; converting continuing professional development (CPD) courses into apprenticeship programmes (especially those related to Leadership and Management). Whilst many employers expressed dislike for the levy, upon exploring their responses further it was found that on balance they were inclined to look for means of reclaiming as much of their levy payment as possible by increasing their apprenticeship provision. As this study has highlighted, there are many constraints on employers being able to achieve this goal, but employers in general were looking to find ways of ensuring that their bottom line was not affected by the levy. There was little evidence that the introduction of the levy would have any impact on the behaviour of those employers who fall just outside the levy’s scope. They did not expect larger employers to over-train such that they would no longer need to invest in apprenticeships to the same degree.
Detailed information is contained within the full research document - The apprenticeship levy: how will employers respond?
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Apprenticeship Funding Reforms - Stakeholder Webinars 7 November 2016
The Department for Education’s Apprenticeship Funding Unit will be running a set of webinars for interested stakeholders on the latest information on the funding reforms.
Please note that if you have been to a recent SFA employer event or webinar then these webinars will cover the same areas.
If interested, please use this link to register for the date and time that works best for you. The current dates are:
Friday 11 November, 10:00 - 11:00 Friday 18 November, 10:00 - 11:00 (fully booked) Friday 2 December, 10:00 - 11:00
cipp.org.uk
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