Agenda item

This reports updates the Committee, as requested, on the Council’s approach to apprenticeship training opportunities for all levels of employees both existing and newly recruited and provides statistical data.

The Committee received a report which provided the Staffing & Remuneration Committee with an update regarding the Council’s approach to apprenticeship training opportunities for all levels of employees both existing and newly recruited staff. The report was introduced by Dan Paul, Chief People Officer as set out in the agenda pack at pages 11-20. The following arose during the discussion of the report:

a.    Since April 2017, employers with a pay bill in excess of £3m are subject to a national apprenticeship levy of 0.5% of their pay bill. Public sector bodies, with more than 250 staff, have also been set a target to employ an average of at least 2.3% of their staff as new apprentice starts. It was noted that Haringey’s levy is c. £896k per year. This represents £74k per month which Haringey was accessing to provide apprenticeship training opportunities existing and incoming employees. The current levy fund available to spend is £1.8m (covering two c.£900k payments over a two year period).

b.    The Committee welcomed the Council’s progress in this area. Clarification was sought around whether the government could try to reclaim the £1.8m allocated to Haringey. In response, officers advised that any unused funding allocation would return to the government after two years, so Haringey effectively needed to spend £74k a month on apprenticeship training opportunities to prevent the government reclaiming some funding.

c.    The Committee sought clarification as to whether the Council had utilised the ability to transfer up to 25% of the funding to SMEs for their apprenticeship training schemes, officer agreed to come back to Committee with a written answer on this point. (Action: Dan Paul).

d.    Members welcomed proposals for Haringey apprenticeships to be allocated to existing staffing positions so that jobs were available at the end of the apprenticeship and noted the contrast with boroughs such as Hackney, who had spent all of their funding allocation but did not have jobs available at the end of their scheme.

e.    In relation to a question around whether specific areas have been identified that it would be better suited to apprenticeships, officers confirmed that work had been done to identify apprenticeship opportunities across different business units and Customers and Transformation currently had the most apprentices at present. Officers also advised that some testing of the internal market for outside apprenticeships had been undertaken, with HR agreeing to fund one year’s salary for an outside apprenticeship. Some applications had been received for this.

f.     In response to a question, officers advised that they had not undertaken any formal benchmarking with other boroughs as it was difficult to do but members were advised that officers were happy with the amount of resources that were being invested in this area.

g.    Officers acknowledged that they were working to reduce agency spend and increase the number of apprentices but that this was a long term area of work.

h.    In relation to a question around career development qualifications, officers advised that there were a range of different providers for these including universities, as this was not a one-size-fits-all approach. It was noted that there were procurement processes in place to achieve the best outcomes for the Council in relation to career development qualifications.

RESOLVED

That the report, information and the next steps in order to increase the number of apprentices at the Council was noted. There was a three pronged approach:

I. Recruit to apprenticeships by default

II. Career Development Qualifications (CDQ)

III. Apprenticeship Development Schemes