If you’ve looked into apprenticeship funding before and got stuck, you’re not alone. It’s the question employers ask us more than any other. Since the rules changed in August 2026, here’s what actually matters for your business, in plain terms.
The two changes that matter
Levy co-investment has gone up. If your business pays the apprenticeship levy and spends more than is in your account, you previously would have had to contribute 5% of the overspend and the government covered the rest. From August 2026, that share rose to 25%. It’s still well short of the full cost, but it changes the budgeting conversation, especially if you’re weighing up more than one apprentice at once.
The levy transfer window has shortened. If you do pay the levy, unspent funds used to sit in your account for 24 months before they expired. That window is now 12 months, but only for funds arriving from August 2026 onward. Funds already in your account before then keep their original 24-month window. If you’ve been sitting on levy funds meaning to use them eventually, eventually needs to happen sooner.
What hasn’t changed
The apprenticeship still funds the training itself, not the apprentice’s wage. You pay them as an employee, same as anyone else on your team. Non-levy co-investment hasn’t moved either: if your apprentice is 16 to 24, training is still fully funded, and if they’re 25 or over, you still pay 5%. And larger levy-paying employers can still transfer their unused funds to smaller businesses, which is often how non-levy employers end up paying nothing towards training costs.
What this means in practice
For most of the small and medium-sized businesses we work with, most of whom don’t pay the levy, apprenticeships remain considerably cheaper than hiring an experienced specialist, and nothing’s changed there this time round. A marketing apprentice, for example, typically costs a fraction of what an agency charges for a handful of hours a week, and the skills stay in the business rather than walking out the door when the contract ends.
The bigger practical change is the levy window. If your business pays the levy and hasn’t used much of it, the shorter expiry means it’s worth having that conversation now rather than next year.
Where employers still get stuck
Funding calculations vary by course, by whether you pay the levy, and by whether a larger employer is transferring funds to you. That’s exactly why it reads as a black box: the answer depends on your specific situation, and a general guide can only get you so far. In our experience, it’s faster to just ask than to work through it alone. We handle the paperwork end to end for every employer we work with, including the levy transfer and the government data submission, so funding rarely ends up being the thing that slows a placement down.
If you want the numbers worked through for your business specifically, get in touch and we’ll talk you through it.
