Coronavirus: skills & community

Please check the national lockdown advice first to see if your business should be open at this time: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home

Learn about funding and grants for skills & training and community organisations in the York and North Yorkshire region.

Skills

Employment Support Schemes

Kickstart Scheme

The Kickstart Scheme gives you financial support to create new 6-month job placements for young people who are currently on Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment. The scheme is open to all organisations.

It pays:

• 100% of the relevant National Minimum Wage for 25 hours a week
• employer National Insurance
• minimum automatic pension enrolment contributions
• £1,500 per job placement for setup costs, support and training

Check if you can apply for a Kickstart Grant

Traineeships

A traineeship is a skills development programme that includes a work placement. The full programme can last from 6 weeks to 1 year, though most traineeships are less than 6 months. If your business can offer at least 70 hours of safe, meaningful, and high-quality work epxerience you can claim £1000 per young person placement. You can claim up to 10 incentive payments per employer, per region for traineeship work placements between 1 September 2020 and 31 July 2022.

Check if you want to support a traineeship

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are jobs which combine practical on-the-job skills with sustained off-the-job learning, available from entry level to a master’s degree equivalent.

Apprenticeships spend 80% of their time in the workplace and at least 20% on off-the-job training in a setting that suits your business needs. This can be a college, a training provider, an institute, or even your place of business.

You can apply for a new payment of £3,000 for each apprentice you take on as a new employee between 1 April 2021 and 30 September 2021. You can choose how you spend this incentive. You must have an apprenticeship service account if you want to apply for an incentive payment.

Learn more about hiring an apprentice

T Levels

T Levels offer businesses an opportunity to hire emerging talent by offering students an industry placement for 45 days (a minimum of 315 hours). You can claim £1000 for every T Level student you hire until July 2022. You can claim payment for up to 20 students who are starting their T Level placements now.

Check what you need to do to offer T Level placements

Additional local support for apprentices

Apprenticeship Wage Subsidy Grant for Hambleton Businesses

There is a limited wage subsidy grant of £2,000 available for small businesses who are located in Hambleton to apply for. The apprentice must live in Hambleton and be aged between 16-24. This is in addition to any financial support gained from the Government.

Employment and skills share

The York & North Yorkshire Growth Hub has created a new Facebook group called Employment & Skills Exchange which is open to everyone to support our business communities and help keep business going. Please join the group, promote and post.

Jobs Fuse

York & North Yorkshire Jobs Fuse brings the expertise of the National Careers Service, the Department for Work and Pensions and the York & North Yorkshire Growth Hub together to provide a one stop shop for both job seekers and local employers.

Learning Toolkit

Our learning toolkit helps individuals and businesses access the knowledge they need to progress and grow. In these challenging times, we are supporting employers by providing details of the online skills resources provided by our partners that will help build resilience in your business and your workforce.

DfE Skills Toolkit 

DfE have launched the Skills Toolkit. This online platform gives people easy access to free, high-quality digital and numeracy courses to help them build up their skills, progress in work and boost their job prospects.

Help to Grow

Help to Grow: Management will give the leaders of 30,000 SMEs access to world-class training on everything from financial management to marketing.

Help to Grow: Digital will give small businesses free online technology advice and 50% discounts on new productivity enhancing software.

Read more: http://gov.uk/helptogrow

Community

Government guidance for the charity sector is available here.

For an up to date overview of community funding visit Community First Yorkshire here.

Businesses, charities and community groups

• Two Ridings Community Foundation is working with the National Emergencies Trust to establish a fund with grants up to £2,000 to support community groups through this unprecedented time. The focus of the fund will be to offer community organisations emergency funding to deal with emerging issues in the community as a result of the continuing threat of coronavirus. Applications to this fund will be assessed on an ongoing basis subject to available funds. Apply here.

• Crowdfunder, the crowdfunding platform, has removed fees for charity and community group users during the crisis.

• Fair4All Finance has created a Covid-19 Resilience Fund to provide up to £5m in grant funding to CDFIs and credit unions in England, plus an expanded Affordable Credit Scale-up Programme to help the sector deliver affordable credit to people in vulnerable circumstances in the future.