The ESFA has announced in their monthly Inform newsletter that they plan to withhold any completion payments that do not meet the criteria in the funding rules, which state that co-investment from the employer must be collected and recorded in the ILR before the completion payment can be made. This change will also apply to any completion payments already made in the 2018/19 funding year and where necessary payments will be recovered. ESFA will also identify and recover any completion payments paid to providers in 2017/18 funding year that were not compliant with funding rules.
The ESFA in future will only pay the provider for the final 90% of the total remaining 20%, once the framework has finished or the end point assessment has taken place and the employer has paid their 10%. More analysis is here.