Exclusive: More than £1bn of taxpayers’ money spent on sending executives and graduates on top-up courses instead of training young apprentices
www.independent.co.uk
Siphon in full working order
The levys are screwed up systems, we're not big enough to pay into that one (and not even sure if it covers my industry), but I'm not surprised it doesn't work.
We pay in the CITB levy, which is for construction, and this ends up 0.35% of PAYE and 1.25% of CIS, no matter what size you are.
It's apparently meant to support construction employers, and supposedly smaller ones, but it doesn't work this way.
All that happens is you get money taken, then you get "grants" for things you don't need, and nothing for the things you do need. I can't recall when we actually used one, of the hassle of doing it isn't worth the time either, as it needs to be sorted by senior staff who are expensive.
Then couple this, with that because the levy is there, people get trained on things which are completely unecessary and then this unnecessary training then becomes expected of others, who also don't need it. It's crazy. Then the training expires every year or two, so it all went down the drain.
So, you send your guys out on a month of training, lose a month of productivity, and the company or staff get nothing from it. Then two years later they're working for someone else. In construction and retention of staff is difficult as contracts change, and so does the money companies can offer, so it ends up like a roundabout.
Every year there are more and more pointless requirements and box-ticking, so construction ends up like a big bag of red tape. The only real winners would be the training providers, but most of them seem to end up going bust also.
Every company has to spend a lot of money on training, which is not covered by the levies, this is more than enough.
Sure, if they need the tax for elsewhere that's fine, just say so, but don't increase the admin burden as this costs money, and the red tape it brings makes uk construction very inefficient (which is why projects get delayed and go over budget).
