Generous funding is available to support your organisation with training staff, regardless of the size of your business. This funding principally comes from the Growth and Skills Levy (GSL, previously known as the Apprenticeship Levy) along with a range of other incentives and support from government.
If you operate in England and your annual payroll is over £3 million, you will pay the Growth and Skills Levy at a rate of 0.5% of your payroll value into a government-provided digital account.
Funds in this account can be used to pay for apprenticeships, apprenticeship units and other government approved education programmes.
Your levy funds are calculated and updated monthly and funds in your digital account are available to you, to pay for training your staff, for up to 12 months. After 12 months funds are automatically reclaimed from your account by the government.
If, as a levy payer, you have spent/allocated all your levy funds towards apprenticeships you can continue to access more training/funding via ‘Co-investment’. In this situation the government will subsidise 75% of the price of any further apprenticeship programmes you wish to make use of.
If your organisation is not required to pay the Growth Skills Levy, what you will pay for an apprenticeship depends on the age of your apprentices. For a significant number of people apprenticeships are free.
For apprentices who have not yet had their 25th birthday at the point of starting their course, the government will subsidise 100% of their course fees (where those fees are up to the funding band allocated to the apprenticeship they will be taking).
For apprentices who are 25 and over the government will Co-invest in their training with you and will subsidise 95% of the price of the apprenticeship.
Apprentices who are aged under 25 and earning less that £50,270pa do not attract Employers ‘Class 1’ National Insurance payments, which could represent a significant saving in your payroll costs (up to ~£3,000 a year).
From October 2026, non-levy paying employers will be able to get a hiring grant of £2,000 when recruiting new apprentices aged 16 to 24. This will apply to those starting an apprenticeship from 1 October 2026, providing they have started their job with their employer within the past 3 months.
If your apprentice is 16 - 19 (or under 25 and has had an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan) you could be eligible for a further £1,000 incentive.
Additional funding may be available for certain other criteria.
Levy payers, who have spent their levy funds, and non-levy payers may also access levy transfer funding to pay for their apprenticeships. Speak to your Degrees at Work consultant for more information about the options and opportunities for levy transfer funding that are available in your area.
Funds in the Digital Apprenticeship Service (DAS) account are used exclusively to pay for apprenticeship programmes. Funds will expire 12 months after they enter a digital account unless they are spent on apprenticeship training.
Once you’ve agreed to invest in apprenticeship training, and the apprenticeship has started, monthly payments will be automatically drawn from your digital account and sent to us as the provider.
This spreads the cost over the lifetime of the apprenticeship. You will see funds entering the digital account each month as you pay the levy, and funds leaving the account regularly each month as you pay for training.
You can choose the training you’d like your apprentices to receive and an approved training provider using the registers available on the National Apprenticeship Service. If you are required to pay the 5% Co-investment share of your programme costs this will be invoiced directly by ARU once your apprentice has started their programme.
Our team of experts is here to help form your organisation’s apprenticeship offering and guide you through the process.