SPIE Pledges £100,000 from Apprenticeship Levy to Support Built Environment

What is the apprenticeship levy?

In 2017, the Government introduced the apprenticeship levy to facilitate continuous funding for apprenticeships and provide UK employers with greater management to offer its workforce a wider scope of training opportunities.

The levy is charged at a rate of 0.5% of an organisation’s total pay bill of over £3 million and each employer receives an allowance of £15,000 to offset against their levy payment.

Making the most of unused funds

SPIE UK recognises that its people are key to the business being a success and therefore, ensuring they can reach their full potential depends on available learning opportunities, whether that be for a new intake of apprentices or the upskilling of existing staff.

Although this is a great benefit to our organisation, the Government has given larger employers the flexibility to transfer up to 25% of any unspent levy funds to help smaller companies.

Trevor Nunes, SPIE UK’s HR Director said: ‘We immediately recognised that this is a great opportunity to work with Total People, a non-profit organisation, by donating £100,000 to help develop the next generation of engineers across the built environment. This will support the attraction and retention of talent in a sector that continues to evolve in support of digital transformation and energy transition.’

With the industry facing an ever-expanding skills shortage, it has never been more important for businesses to work together to mitigate this impact and to cater for an increasing demand for skilled engineers. That is why, as a key player in the critical engineering sector, being able to invest not only in our own people, but indirectly in the employees of small to medium sized companies via this pledge, we are playing our part in bridging the industry’s skills gap.