£600,000 left in Tees Valley levy pot as apprentice scheme hits 89 placements
Nearly £1.8m has been pledged through the Tees Valley Apprenticeship Levy Matching Service, and around £600,000 of it is still unclaimed and available to local businesses looking to take on an apprentice.
The service, coordinated by Tees Valley Combined Authority, connects large employers holding unspent Apprenticeship Levy funds with smaller firms that do not pay the levy themselves. So far 11 donor businesses, including the BBC, Amazon and bp, have put money in, and that funding has helped 26 companies take on 89 apprentices across the region.
How the transfer works
The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in 2017 and is paid by employers with an annual wage bill above £3m, at a rate of 0.5 per cent of the pay bill. Levy payers can transfer a share of their unused funds to other employers, which covers the training and assessment costs of an apprenticeship. The matching service exists to pair donors with recipients and provide support through the process, at no cost to either side.
Councillor Lisa Evans, TVCA cabinet member for employment and skills, said apprenticeships "can be truly life changing" and now provide routes into engineering, manufacturing and construction as well as digital, professional and health careers. She encouraged more large employers to pledge unused funds and urged businesses of all sizes to check whether the scheme could help them recruit.
Why it matters to Teesside trades
For a small firm the maths is the point. Training and assessment costs are usually the barrier to hiring a first apprentice, and a transfer removes that cost from the wage bill, leaving the employer to cover salary and supervision.
That is directly relevant to the sort of businesses this site covers. Local building contractors, electrical firms, roofers, plumbers and groundworks outfits are the ones most often priced out of formal training routes, and they are also the ones facing the tightest labour supply as Teesworks, housing schemes and energy projects pull experienced tradespeople towards larger sites.
With a large pipeline of construction and industrial work in the region, the skills gap is a commercial risk for smaller firms, not just a policy problem. Any trade business in the Tees Valley considering an apprentice this year should check the scheme before the current pot is allocated. Details are available through Tees Valley Combined Authority.