Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what amount of apprenticeship levy funding expired each month since January 2020.

The funds in apprenticeship service accounts are available for levy-paying employers to use for 24 months before they begin to expire on a rolling, month-by-month basis. This means the expiry figures in the months from January to October 2020 relate to the funds which entered levy-paying employer accounts from January to October 2018.

£1,961 million entered employer accounts between January and October 2018 and between January and October 2020, £1,038 million expired. This accounts for 53%. The table below provides a monthly breakdown.

The figures in the table refer to the total value of expired levy funds in accounts registered with the apprenticeship service. Levy-paying employers are not obliged to register for an account. Expiry in January 2020 relates to unused levy declared in January 2018. Levy declarations in April 2018 were higher than prior months, as employers made upwards adjustments in this month to correct the total levy declarations for the 2017-18 financial year. This therefore results in a higher amount of expired funds in April 2020.

We do not anticipate that all employers who pay the levy will need or want to use all the funds in their accounts, though they are able to do so. Funds raised by the levy are used to support the whole apprenticeship system. This means that employers’ unused funds are not lost, but are used to support apprenticeships in smaller employers and to cover the ongoing costs of apprentices already in training,

The apprenticeship budget is not affected by the value of any funds which may expire from employers’ accounts each month. As my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set out in the Spending Review, we will again be making available £2.5 billion for investment in apprenticeships in the 2021-22 financial year, which is double that spent in 2010-11.