3 June 2016 | 

This week we asked our ThinkTank members: Would your organisation benefit from a delay to the Apprenticeship Levy being introduced? Would more time help you to prepare?   

Last month the government published employer guidelines for the Apprenticeship Levy, which comes into force in April 2017.

The document, released by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, applies to employers from any sector with a pay bill of more than £3 million a year.

In its recently published BIFM’s FM Business Confidence Monitor report for 2016, Martyn Freeman, managing director of Mitie FM, said: “There is so much more we need to understand about how the Apprentice Levy is going to work, how it is going to be funded and how it is going to be delivered.

“We are at the early stages of any legislative change and there is a lot of work to do to understand how that will affect employers.”

The Business Confidence Monitor also suggested that the FM sector is uncertain of the new levy, which indicates that government has much still to do to sell this piece of legislation.

The Engineering Employers’ Federation and others have also expressed “grave concerns” about the scheme’s design.

So would your organisation benefit from a delay to the Apprenticeship Levy being introduced?

Most of our participants – 77 per cent – said that they were not prepared, and that the policy is problematic.

It’s an indication that there is some way to go before employers are comfortable with the use of the sector’s apprenticeship schemes.

Nevertheless, 23 per cent of respondents said that there were no problems – and that they were ready for the levy. There is an appetite and readiness for the policy – but that does not address the negative feelings indicated.

“Whatever may be the flaws in the current Apprenticeship Levy, the idea is sound in principle,” said one correspondent.

We’ll be following the development of this story over the coming weeks. Should you wish to join this or any other debates, please sign up to our LinkedIn Think Tank group at
www.tinyurl.com/fmthinktank