Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many grants have been awarded to firms to take on an apprenticeship since the most recent Spending Review; and in which sectors those grants have been allocated.

Apprenticeships will be more important than ever in helping businesses to recruit the right people and develop the skills they need to recover and grow. To help employers offer new apprenticeships, they are now able to claim £2,000 for every new apprentice they hire under the age of 25, in recognition of the particular impacts of COVID-19 on the employment prospects of this group, and £1,500 for new apprentices aged 25 and over. These incentive payments were announced as part of the government’s Plan for Jobs in July 2020 and the extension of the scheme (to the end of March 2021) was announced in the November Spending Review. Employers have been able to register to claim the incentive since 1 September 2020.

It is encouraging that employers continue to see the value apprentices can bring to their businesses; as of 1 December 2020 employers had so far claimed incentive payments for 11,520 apprentices. We do not hold figures for incentive payments by industry sector.

Updated figures will be published in the ‘Apprenticeships and traineeships: January 2021’ statistics publication on 28 January 2021, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/apprenticeships-and-traineeships-january-2021.