Benefits to Your Business.

You can get money to go towards the cost of training and assessment. The amount you get depends on whether you pay the Apprenticeship levy or not.

You will pay the wages of the apprentice in line with 5% towards the cost of training and assessing your apprentice. The Government will pay the rest (95%)

The levy is paid by public and private sector employers with payroll over £3million. They pay 0.5% of their annual payroll which is collected monthly via PAYE. Levy-paying businesses are then eligible to draw down money from this fund to spend on Apprenticeship training programmes.

No, not at all. The levy is there to fund Apprenticeship training for all employers. Smaller employers – those with a total annual pay bill of less than £3million – pay just 5% of the cost of their Apprenticeship training and the Government pays the rest.

We understand that employers want and need flexibility. To support this the Government extended the amount of time employers have to spend their levy funds from 18 to 24 months. Levy paying employers can now also transfer up to 25% of their Levy funds to other employers.

Levy-paying employers access their funds through the online Apprenticeship service. The funds in their accounts are available to spend on apprenticeship training in England.

Employers have 24 months to use their funds once they enter their apprenticeship service account, after this point, their funds will expire. The funds expire to encourage levy paying employers to invest in high-quality training and assessment and to prevent levy payers from accruing very large balances. However, any unspent levy funds within each financial year are then used to support existing apprentices to complete their training, pay for apprenticeship training for smaller employers and additional payments to support apprentices.