W BUSINESS
L
L to R: Damian Burdin - Progress to
Excellence, Patsy Crocker - Wirral
Chamber and Phil Jones - Wirral Met
College .
THE APPRENTICESHIP LEVY – COMPANIES
ARE URGED TO USE IT OR LOSE IT!
Paula Basnett, CEO, Wirral Chamber of Commerce, writes…
Wirral Met College has united with Wirral Chamber of
Commerce and Progress to Excellence in a new scheme to utilise
underspend of the Apprenticeship Levy funding. employers to act, if not they will lose funds as the Government will
take them back. I am calling on all levy payers in the region, who do
not currently use their levy pot, to do so now.”
The 6th April 2019 will mark the two-year anniversary since the
introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy, this date will also mark the
start of the Government’s ‘claw back’ of any unspent monies from
2017. Sue Higginson, Principal of Wirral Met College, agreed,
‘Apprenticeship reforms allow larger companies that pay an
apprentice levy to support smaller organisations through transfer of
a percentage of unspent levy. We can support companies who wish
to do this so that they can help smaller organisations benefit through
the growth and development of local skills for local people.”
Wirral will be the first borough nationally to highlight how larger
companies can support the growth of smaller companies in the local
area. The initiative aims to raise levy payers awareness of alternative
ways that they can potentially choose to spend their unused levy
funds.
Wirral Chamber of Commerce, Progress to Excellence and Wirral
Met College are highlighting that businesses can ‘gift’ up to 10%
of their total levy value to support other Wirral organisations in
training through apprenticeships. They may choose to work with a
charity of their choice, a smaller business in their supply chain or
any other Wirral employer that could benefit from a training and
development re-investment through an apprenticeship.
Levy payers will be able to decide, as individuals, where they can ‘gift’
their under spent levy funds, charities as an example, as non-levy
payers, could benefit by receiving funding from a larger Wirral based
business to help support a wide range of apprenticeship training,
such as leadership and management, business administration and
ICT.
An Open University report published in April 2018 highlighted that
£1.28b apprenticeship funds are sitting unused, and warned that if
employers didn’t start to use these funds they risked losing in excess
of £139m a month from April 2019. Figures released in December
2018 showed there were just 75,800 apprenticeship starts in 2017/18,
a drop of 24 per cent on the 2016/17 total.
Whilst it is likely that 90% of the underspend pot will be returned to
central government, levy paying companies can still look to gift up
to 10% of underspend to support Wirral SMEs with apprenticeship
and upskilling requirements.
With this Apprenticeship Levy initiative, there is a need for
companies to look very quickly at how they can potentially
utilise any levy underspend, so should you wish to find out more
about this, please contact Patsy Crocker as soon as possible at
[email protected].
Patsy Crocker at Wirral Chamber of Commerce said, “We want
to ensure our business community can take advantage of this
initiative to support their aspirations for growth through accelerated
leadership and management skills to generate expansion.”
This view was echoed by Damian Burdin, CEO at Progress to
Excellence Ltd, who added, “Now is the time for levy paying
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