Speaking to delegates at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the Chancellor Philip Hammond has announced a range of apprenticeship measures including increasing the levy transfer facility from 10 to 25 per cent, £100M for the National Retraining Scheme and £5M for the IfA to introduce and update standards and ensure that all new apprenticeship standards are in place and replacing frameworks by August 2020. Mr Hammond also announced a consultation on how the levy would operate after 2020 and an extra £90M of funding, although it appears that this isn’t new money but equates to the figure released from levy pots by the increase in the levy transfer percentage. The official announcement is here. Employers and sector leaders have given a mixed response to the announcements reported here in FE Week and here in FE News. Text of the Chancellor’s speech is here. Curiously, at the same time as levy transfers are made more flexible, Skills Minister, Anne Milton has commented that she has concerns about fraud within the current funding system.
