The government has pledged to extend eligibility for a new £1,500 apprenticeship training grant to more construction SME employers following the publication of the Jason Holt review on apprenticeships earlier this week.
Introduced in April, the £1,500 grant was originally on offer only to SMEs that had not taken on an apprentice in the past three years. But this week BIS announced that it would now be available to any SME employer that had not taken on an apprentice in the past 12 months.
The grant will be available for up to 10 apprentices, and companies with up to 1,000 employees can now benefit. Training providers will also now pay employers the full amount of £1,500 at the 13-week stage after the apprentice starts, instead of in instalments.
Geoff Lister, chair of the Cross-Industry Construction Apprenticeship Task Force, welcomed the news, saying: “The CCATF has always argued that it made no sense to prevent businesses with recent experience of training apprentices from accessing this grant. These businesses will have a better understanding of what to expect and may, therefore, be able to provide a more suitable training environment. However, this does not mean they are any less discouraged by the cost of employing an apprentice. The decision to change the eligibility criteria to allow more business to participate is extremely welcome.
Philip Hall MCIOB, who runs Oxford-based Chartered Building Company Hall Construction, stands to benefit from the change. “It’s certainly positive and encouraging. We are ourselves looking at reviewing our apprenticeship take-up – if the upturn comes, we want to be ready for it,” he said.
Hall’s company is based in David Cameron’s Witney constituency, and last year he took advantage of the Prime Minister’s constituency surgery to press the case for more funding for construction training. “In the recession, builders are reluctant to invest so people tend to hold back. So having reasonable funding available does encourage people,” added Hall, who sits on the FMB’s training executive and the National Heritage Training Group Executive Committee.
Mike Smith, who runs Plymouth-based micro contractor Mainly Kitchens, has trained five apprentices over the years but was unable to access the grant for his current apprentice. He said: “It’s a move in the right direction, it should definitely encourage smaller businesses. Apparently 65% of apprentice training in construction is done by firms with less than 50 staff, and I think apprentices are often better off in smaller firms. Here they get one to one, and learn absolutely everything.”
Following the Holt review, the government also plans to increase the monitoring of training providers, and help make SMEs more aware of support from the National Apprenticeship Service.
