Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Government’s apprenticeship and levy statistics, published in October 2019, how many of the 780 recorded accounts of apprenticeship levy voucher transfers resulting on starts on standards were transferred from levy-paying companies to non-levy paying small to medium-sized employers; and what proportion of those apprenticeships were in the construction sector.

Levy-paying employers in England do not use digital vouchers. Employers that pay the apprenticeship levy use funds in their apprenticeship service accounts to pay for training and assessment and to transfer to other employers

In October 2019, the apprenticeships and levy statistics publication reported that there were 780 transferred commitments that have materialised into apprenticeship starts as recorded on the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) as at 31 August 2019. Of these, 20 (2.7%) were starts in the Construction, Planning and Built Environment sector subject area.

Please note:
1) The figures above are rounded to the nearest 10 and percentage to 1 decimal place.

2) The percentage is derived from unrounded figures.

3) The figures above show only those transfers where a start is taking place on a standard in the Construction, Planning and Built Environment sector subject area. The construction industry sector could include starts on standards in other sector subject areas (i.e. Business, Administration and Law).

We are unable to identify whether a transfer between apprenticeship service accounts was from a levy-paying company to a non-levy paying company as we do not centrally hold data on the size of employer and their industry sector. This means we cannot identify if these transfers of levy funds were to the apprenticeship service accounts of small to medium-sized employers. The Department for Education does, however, periodically perform an analysis linking ILR data to the Inter-Departmental Business Register data (held by the Office for National Statistics) to identify the size and industry sector of employers, with the most recent analysis covering the 2016/17 academic year. Thes statistics are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-in-england-by-industry-characteristics.