2023-08-28
Keeping safe in the real world
Levy Recovery
Recovering Your Apprenticeship Levy
At 0.5% of your pay bill, your contribution to the Apprenticeship Levy could be significant. If you are an employer with a payroll of £3m or more you’ll be paying into the apprenticeship levy. Your payments have a lifespan of 2 years and if they are not used you lose the money, simply put ‘if you don’t use it you will lose it’.
The funds that you pay into your levy account can only be spent on apprenticeship training, so it makes sense that if you are already spending the money to use it to develop and upskill your workforce. This isn’t restricted to new employees, but can be used for established, existing members of your team.
Many employers make use of the apprenticeship levy to develop the capabilities of their Managers and Leaders through the Team Leader or Operations Manager programme. You could improve the efficiencies and spend of your supply chain through the Supply Chain Leader programme or ensure projects are managed to the highest level by enrolling your project management team onto the Associate Project Manager programme.
Apprenticeships can still be beneficial for more junior roles such as Business Administration or Customer service positions, these roles are often at the heart of the successful running of a business.
Our aim is to work with you to create and implement a structured apprenticeship plan that can recover the funds you have paid in and, if you require it, take advantage of 95% government co-funding.
Apprenticeships can be a huge benefit to any business but we appreciate you may not have the time to navigate your way through setting up apprenticeship training. The apprenticeship college will work with you to plan apprenticeships that deliver the additional skills needed for your staff that are both recoverable from your levy pot and create added value to your business.
Our clients will recover in excess of £20 million from the Apprenticeship Levy this year.
The Basics
Every apprenticeship that we offer has a recovery value. Depending on the specific apprenticeship standard you choose. The rates are set by Government and will be subject to annual review. See our Level 5 Management Development course description for an example.
The simplest way to think about how to recover your levy is to work out how much you are paying in annually and then look up the values (and recommended durations) of the apprenticeships you want to use and calculate how much of your levy such a programme would recover.
Things you may need to know
All apprenticeships are different. Not only do they have different content but will have different programme lengths, number of workshops and costs. The minimum length of an apprenticeship is 12 months, but some may last 18 months, 24 months or in some cases 4 years. The cost of the apprenticeship is split over the duration of the programme on a monthly basis.
Prior to any learner starting with us we will plan the delivery over the relevant time period to ensure everyone is clear on the schedule.
End Point Assessment
There are a few more variables to consider. 20% of the recovery value is held back until your apprentice has undertaken the end point assessment (EPA). The EPA is a summative assessment process that normally requires the apprentice to make a formal presentation of their portfolio of work and answers questions set by an assessment panel. The final 20% of the levy value can only be paid to your training provider after your apprentices have completed their EPA.
Furthermore, if the apprenticeship includes mandatory qualifications these must be completed prior to the EPA. So there’s a real need to make sure that the teaching and learning is really well planned and delivered to ensure that the apprentice completes on time.
So from a planning point of view, a projected apprenticeship monthly recovery profile would be based on 80% of the total recovery value, divided by the number of months of the apprenticeship.
How to get started
To get the ball rolling you’ll need to have registered as a levy-paying employer and set up your Apprenticeship Service (AS) account.
Then it’s a question of working with your training provider to plan your apprenticeship scheme and to profile monthly and annual recovery values. At the Apprenticeship College, our planning culminates in an Apprenticeship Blueprint that:
- describes the skill set (s) that you want your staff to improve
- agrees the apprenticeships to be delivered
- states the number of employees to be enrolled on each course
- identifies the durations of each apprenticeship
- profiles monthly recovery values
- profiles projected recovery values on completions
- presents a sample course content plan for each apprenticeships
- provides sample teaching and learning plans
Our apprenticeship training uses a combination of masterclasses, immersive theatre-based learning, technical workshops, online learning and skills coaching. Learn more about our training model here.