Chancellor Rishi Sunak has decided to double the budget for employees in hiring apprentices of all ages. This budget has been agreed to help young people and their traineeship. Specifically, it has been increased up to a 3k incentive payment.
The beneficiaries of this said grant are apprentices taken in by employers despite COVID. The UK government will pay monetary assistance of £3,000 to employers who take in apprentices between April 1st and September 31st, 2021. Previously, it was only £1,500 for every new employee they take in or £2,000 if they aged 24 years old or older. The renewal has now allowed apprentices of all ages and an increased rate.Â
Payment of this increase applies to those employers in England.Â
Enhanced ApprenticeshipsÂ
An additional £7m was added to the budget to enable apprentices to work across multiple employers and work on several projects. The government believes this will increase diversity in what they call the Diverse Apprenticeship Talent Pipeline, where employers will need to put forth their proposals.Â
The Creative Industries Council will be particularly asked to support this endeavour, as the funds going into the project will also affect the creative sector. The head of the ACCA UK, Claire Benninson, has accepted the increased budget and the apprentices’ versatility gratefully. However, she has added a possible downfall of this supposedly foolproof plan.Â
Benninson believes the increased budget of £3,000 is not substantial enough of an increase to cause a call-to-action response from employers. She added it’s not feasible to see employers creating new jobs and sustaining them when the number of apprentices itself is falling gradually. Instead of a one-off payment, she believes the opposite, a subsidized wage for new starters, will help employers and apprentices more in the long run.Â
Aid For The Younger Generation
For the duration of Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s time, the younger generation has ceased taking the backseat and finally gained the attention they very much need, especially during the paralyzing effects of the pandemic. Last summer, he presented his Kickstarter scheme called the “Kickstarter generation”.Â
Sunak started this Kickstarter. According to a cabinet meeting, he started it to protect as many jobs for the younger generation. Sunak believes by doing this, they will be mitigating the already worsening economic crises in their hands. CBI has praised his endeavour as a necessary investment in the future of younger people.
This scheme amounted to £2bn in budget and has been a work in progress since last year’s September and rebooted in February 2021. The reboot brought with it changes to the size and variety of employers which Sunak had opened. The 30 job threshold is no longer considered at this time.
Sunak had hailed the success of over 120,000 young people with the most significant risk of unemployment, which may be due to the coronavirus or other circumstances. Through Kickstarter, Sanuk has provided them with fully-subsidized jobs and covers the whole of the National Minimum Wage 25 hours per week. Thus, employers in arts, manufacturing, retail, and construction have also taken part.Â
