Apprentices: Finance

(asked on 14th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to introduce an appeals process for businesses that have made an out of time application for funding for apprenticeship training as a result of inaccurate advice given by training providers.


Answered by
Alex Burghart Portrait
Alex Burghart
Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 21st March 2022

The department is committed to supporting employers and apprentices to benefit from the high-quality training that an apprenticeship offers. We introduced incentive payments as part of the Plan for Jobs to support employers to offer apprenticeships to new hires between 1 August 2020 and 31 January 2022.

The incentive payment scheme was implemented across three phases, with extensions and new phases developed in response to the national impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the expansion of the Plan for Jobs package.

From the onset of the scheme, we have communicated extensively to employers and providers that, as the employer receives the incentive payment directly, it is their responsibility to apply for the payment.

Deadlines for each phase of the scheme and how to apply have been communicated in a number of ways. This includes through direct emails to all apprentice employers, notifications in employers’ apprenticeship service accounts, guidance on GOV.UK pages, posts on social media channels, and the apprenticeship funding rules.

There has been no formal obligation for training providers to inform employers of the process for applying for incentive payments, but we have communicated extensively with providers and intermediary organisations so that they have the same information as employers. Training providers may have chosen to share information or offer guidance to their employers on the incentives scheme as part of their activities to support the smooth running of an employer’s apprenticeship programme.

Due to our extensive communications to employers, we have no plans to introduce an appeals process for employers who missed the deadline. We do not hold information on the number, or details, of employers that did not submit an application for an incentive payment in time.

Over 170,000 incentive payment claims have been submitted by employers as of February 2022. Employers of all sizes can continue to access government funding for apprenticeship training and assessment and we continue to offer £1,000 payments to employers and providers when they hire apprentices aged 16 to 18.

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