Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many companies have received training subsidies from the apprenticeship levy in each of the last three years.

The government introduced the apprenticeship levy to incentivise larger businesses to develop and invest in their own apprenticeship programmes whilst ensuring the availability of funding for smaller employers wanting to offer apprenticeships. The levy has supported the government to increase investment in the apprenticeships system in England to £2.7 billion in the 2024/25 financial year and supports employers of all sizes to boost the skills of their workforces.

Employers in England who pay the apprenticeship levy can access funds for apprenticeship training and assessment by registering for an apprenticeship service account. Since April 2021, all non-levy paying employers hiring new apprentices have accessed funds through apprenticeship service accounts.

The table below shows the number of employer accounts on the apprenticeship service that have accessed funds for apprenticeship training and assessment in each of the last three academic years.

*To note that this data does not include employers who started an apprenticeship prior to April 2021 with a training provider who held a contract with the Education and Skills Funding Agency. As non-levy paying employers started accessing funding via the Apprenticeship Service from January 2020, this means that the figure above for 2020/21 will significantly underrepresent the total number of employers accessing funding.