The levy you do not pay just changed what an apprentice costs you.

The split that matters is by the apprentice's age, and for a small firm it moved in one direction only.

What the split is doing

It is a deliberate redirection of public money toward younger entrants. From August the government funds the training for every apprentice aged 16 to 24, where before a small firm paid 5% for the older ones in that band. At 25 and over, a small firm’s share stays at 5%; it is the large employers who run out of levy funds whose share went from 5% to 25%.

For a small firm that is a hiring signal rather than a subsidy question. Taking on a 22-year-old now costs nothing in training and can bring a hiring payment of up to £2,000; retraining an existing 40-year-old still costs 5%. The gap is modest for a small firm and five times sharper for a large one.

Whether that is good policy depends on what you think the shortage is. It is unambiguously a change in the relative price of two different responses to the same skills gap.

Three dates worth having

1. 1 January 2026 — Level 7 apprenticeships restricted to ages 16 to 21, and to under-25s who are care leavers or have an education, health and care plan, which removed a route many firms used for senior professional qualifications.
2. 1 August 2026 — the funding split above, the end of the 10% top-up, and levy funds expiring at 12 months instead of 24.
3. 1 October 2026 — a hiring payment of up to £2,000, paid in instalments, for a firm that does not pay the levy and hires an apprentice aged 16 to 24 who has not worked there for more than 90 days.

Funding was also withdrawn from 16 apprenticeship standards in September 2026, so a standard that existed when a plan was made may not exist now.

What this does not tell you

It does not tell you whether an apprenticeship is the right route for a particular role, which depends on the standard, the provider and whether anybody in your firm has time to supervise — and supervision is the cost that never appears in a funding table. The same arithmetic that prices adopting software applies to adopting a person: the subsidy is the smallest number in the decision. The apprentice calculator puts all three together.

Nor does it cover the devolved picture. Skills policy differs across the UK and the figures above are the England position.

What it does settle is that a levy most small firms do not pay changed their costs anyway, which is the general lesson worth taking: the duties that reach you indirectly are the ones nobody writes to you about. The employment changes running alongside this are in the Employment Rights Act note, and what your hiring software decides is the part with a legal duty attached.