Incentive payments for hiring a new apprentice
Incentive payments for employers who hire a new apprentice between 1 April 2021 and 30 September 2021.
Apply for the hire a new apprentice payment
You can apply for new apprentices who joined your organisation from 1 April 2021 to 30 September 2021. You must set up an apprenticeship service account.
The incentive payment is in addition to the £1,000 employers already receive for hiring an apprentice:
- aged 16 to 18 years old
- under 25 with an education, health and care plan or who has been in the care of their local authority
To receive the full payment, the apprenticeship must last for at least one year.
Apprentices who joined your organisation from 1 April 2021
You will receive £3,000 for new apprentices of any age who have an employment start date of 1 April 2021 to 30 September 2021.
They must have an apprenticeship start date of 1 April 2021 to 30 November 2021.
Apprentices who joined your organisation before 1 April 2021
The application deadline for these apprentices has closed.
What you can use the payment for
The payment is different to apprenticeship levy funds, so you can spend it on anything to support your organisation’s costs. For example, on uniforms, your apprentice’s travel or their salary. You do not have to pay it back.
Eligibility
You can only apply for new apprentices who joined your organisation from 1 April 2021 to 30 September 2021.
You cannot apply for an existing employee who joined your organisation before 1 April 2021, even if they started an apprenticeship after this date.
How to apply
You can apply for the incentive payment after you add new apprentices to your apprenticeship service account.
When you’ll get paid
We cannot make any payments until we’ve received and verified your organisation and finance details. This could take up to 80 days and we may contact someone from your organisation.
We’ll make the payment in 2 equal instalments for each apprentice. The first payment is due after an apprentice completes 90 days of their apprenticeship and the second is due after 365 days.
We’ll make payments by Bacs on the 14th working day of the month. It usually takes 3 working days to process.
After you apply, you can view applications, estimated payment dates and check the status of each payment in your apprenticeship service account.
Get help
You can either:
Last updated 1 June 2021 + show all updates
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Updated to show that the application deadline has passed for phase 1 incentive applications.
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Added phase 2 application closing deadline.
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Extending the phase 1 application window to 31 May 2021.
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Updated to reflect incentives extension and increase.
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Added additional information to make it clear that you can only apply for an incentive payment for a new employee apprentice, if you have set up an apprenticeship account and are using it to access funding for that apprentice's training.
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Financial incentive payments for hiring a new apprentice have been extended to new apprentices hired by 31 March 2021.
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Added information about when we'll make the incentive payments.
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Updated information on incentive payments and how to claim them by setting up an apprenticeship service employer account.
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First published.