New grants now available to support businesses to recruit Apprentices
Posted by Carly Roper on Friday 14 September 2012
Thanks to new funding from St.Helens Council, grants of up to £4000 are now available to businesses recruiting an Apprentice in St Helens.
St.Helens Council has provided £500,000 of funding to support 200 young people into Apprenticeships delivered by St Helens Chamber. To encourage local businesses to support the programme, businesses that create a new permanent Apprenticeship vacancy for a young person from St Helens will be offered a subsidy of £2,500 towards their salary.
This funding is in addition to the government’s AGE grant which can offer a further £1500 to businesses who have not recruited an Apprentice within the last 12 months.
Cllr Marie Rimmer, Leader of St.Helens Council commented:
“We are delighted to be able to help our young people into employment in these very difficult times. This is one of a number of schemes we intend to support, to provide young people with a start to their working lives and to commence what, hopefully, will be a successful career. Our partnership with the Chamber has already provided major benefits to the Town and this is another important way we are improving the economic prospects of the town and the life chances of our young people.
“Youth unemployment is a tragic waste of talent and we need to address this issue, both locally and nationally, we will continue to do our utmost to improve the employment prospects and call on the Town’s employers to assist in this goal by supporting this scheme.”
Kath Boullen, Chief Executive at St Helens Chamber, added: “We are delighted to be able to help local young people to get started on their careers in St Helens, as a result of this support provided by St Helens Council. This funding will enable at least 200 young people to secure a permanent job with Apprenticeship training, and we know from experience that local businesses will get behind this.
“Last year with the help of St Helens Council we launched our 100 Apprenticeships in 100 Days challenge, which actually resulted in 118 Apprenticeships being created. It is still tough for young people to get started and we really appreciate the priority St.Helens Council attach to helping young people in the Borough.”
Apprenticeships from St Helens Chamber are available in a wide range of areas including business administration, manufacturing, health & social care, sales and marketing, IT, retail, warehousing and customer service.
Businesses recruiting an Apprentice through the programme will be required to pay a minimum of £2.65 per hour for the first year (the national minimum wage for Apprentices) increasing to at least national minimum wage after that. The subsidy will not be available for short-term or fixed-term contracts of employment.
For more information please contact Daniel Manchester or Debbie Hillon on 01744 742000 or email workforce@sthelenschamber.com
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