Samantha McCarthy

Administration Charge to Employers

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Hi, 

Could I ask if any other training providers include a Administration charge in their contract or a separate document with the employer? 

We seem to be having quite a few learner's come off programme as a non-starter so within the first 6 weeks and obviously refund the 5% contribution if they've paid upfront. However, it's a lot of admin processing time our end for nothing, so just wanted to see if anyone else does this and if we are allowed to do this or not? 

Many thanks

Sammie 

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Ruth Canham-James

We don't. I don't think we get enough leaving within 6 weeks to worry about it. For context/scale, we have nearly 900 apprentices at any one time. But yes, it's a huge amount of work to onboard an apprentice, to then get nothing for your efforts.

Samantha McCarthy

Thanks Ruth. We have a much less apprentices so feel it affects us a lot more. Do you happen to know if this is against any ESFA rules if we were to charge an admin fee? 

Many thanks

Ruth Canham-James

I'm not sure. Once you're not getting any ESFA funding for an apprentice, it sort of becomes not their business? You can't retain any levy funds or ESFA funding, so you'd be invoicing separately. If it would be a case of not refunding employer 5% contribution, that might get more tricky. 

We have stuff in our contracts about employers paying us directly if we end up not being able to claim the full amount of funding due to their errors. Things like stopping the DAS record too early, and refusing to fix it. We think we'd be justified in claiming the difference from them, though we've never had to do it.