How Charities Can Access and Utilise the Apprenticeship Levy
As recruiters to the charity and not-for-profit sector, here at Prospectus, we’re passionate about promoting apprenticeships within the sector. In support of National Apprenticeship Week 2024, we’ve partnered with the Co-op to facilitate a discussion around apprenticeships and how charities can access the Apprenticeship Levy, to aid the provision of apprentices in your organisation.
What is the Apprenticeship Levy and the Levy Share?
The Apprenticeship Levy is a tax paid at 0.5% of an employer’s pay bill if the annual pay bill is more than £3 million. It is paid on a monthly basis to spend on their own apprenticeship training costs. Any unused levy expires after 24 months and is returned to HMRC. In 2019/20, this amounted to £330million!
To avoid the expiry of some of the funds, since April 2019, levy-paying employers have been able to transfer a maximum amount of 25% of their annual funds to another organisation. Transferred funds can be used to pay for the training and assessment costs of the apprenticeships agreed with the receiving employer.
The Co-op has led the way by identifying a way to collaborate with like-minded partners to pledge unspent levy funds and share them in a targeted way to support the provision of apprenticeships for under-represented groups, removing some of the administrative burden for employers.
Watch the discussion
To help explain this in a little more depth, we are delighted to partner with the Co-op in hosting a conversation with sector leaders to share their knowledge and experiences of employing and supporting apprentices within their own organisations.
We were kindly joined by Laura-Jane Rawlings, CEO of Youth Employment UK, Louise Timperley, Apprenticeship Manager at Co-op and Tommy McDade, Head of Business for Employment, Training and Skills at Barnardo’s.
Hosted by Peter Beeby, CEO of Prospectus, the panel shared their valuable knowledge, experiences and significance of the apprenticeship levy and how they have used apprenticeships to aid the development of talent in their organisation.
Peter posed some questions to the panel that covered:
- An overview of the apprenticeship levy
- The benefits of employing apprentices in your organisation
- The wide range of standards that apply to the charity sector
- Experiences of employing apprentices for both new joiners and current employees
- Where to go for further information
Watch the video below to hear the panel’s open and honest answers about their experiences, processes and their plans for the future.
Find further resources on Apprenticeships and the Apprenticeship Levy, as well as the websites mentioned in the video, below:
- Apprenticeships.gov.uk
- Cooplevyshare.co.uk
- Youthemployment.org.uk
- Barnardos-ets.org.uk
- Instituteforapprenticeships.org
