The recent story in the Financial Times that employers ‘lose more than £3.3bn in unspent apprenticeship levy funds’ is the latest in a long line of gloomy stories around the Levy. We have lurched between ‘Levy underspend must be addressed’ and ‘Levy on brink of overspend’ headlines for at least four years. We find ourselves in a position where employers are frustrated they have not spent all their Levy while government officials are actively trying to stop an overspend. No one seems happy (other than the hundreds of thousands of apprentices that owe their training to the Levy, of course) – and the policy debate on growing skills investment beyond the Levy is neglected.
‘Underspend’ and ‘overspend’ worries on the Levy are both valid, counterintuitively, at the same time. In trying to explain this, I sympathise hugely with the frustration employers feel towards an opaque system.
