Founders and Coders
If your employer pays the Apprenticeship Levy, they've already contributed this money; it's sitting in a ring-fenced account waiting to be spent. This programme is a way for them to get real value from funds they've already paid, rather than letting them expire unused.
The Apprenticeship Levy is a payroll tax that applies to all UK employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million. If your organisation falls into this category, you pay 0.5% of your total payroll into a ring-fenced digital account each month, collected via PAYE.
How the levy account works: The money accumulates in your Apprenticeship Service account and can only be spent on approved apprenticeship training and assessment. The government adds a 10% top-up to your contributions, so for every £1 you pay in, you have £1.10 available to spend. Funds enter your account monthly and remain available for 24 months; after that, any unspent balance expires.
Spending your levy: When you enrol an apprentice, the training costs are drawn from your levy account. Each apprenticeship standard sits within a funding band (ranging from £1,500 to £27,000) that sets the maximum the government will contribute. For the Level 6 Machine Learning Engineer apprenticeship, the funding band is £22,000.
Employers with an annual pay bill under £3 million do not pay the Apprenticeship Levy. If that is your employer, one of our partner employers transfers unused levy funds to cover the full £22,000, so your organisation pays nothing for the training and assessment.
If your organisation doesn't pay the levy (or pays the levy but has exhausted your funds), there's another option: receiving a transfer of unused levy from a larger employer.
How levy transfers work: Levy-paying employers can transfer up to 25% of their annual levy funds to other organisations. Many large employers actively look to transfer unused funds rather than let them expire, and some do this through public pledge schemes or partnerships with local authorities and sector bodies.
What this means for you: A levy transfer covers 100% of the training and assessment costs. You pay nothing.
We arrange the transfer: We work with a network of levy-paying employers who have pledged to transfer funds to support apprenticeship training. We connect you with a transfer partner and handle the administrative process.