Agenda item

The Committee received a report from the Director Workforce and Change providing an overview of the achievements and challenges in relation to apprenticeships within the Council.

The Head of HR informed members that in 2022 the apprenticeship team had moved from Education, Skills and Learning to the Human Resources service. The hiring process had been modified to ensure that apprenticeships were proactively considered instead of or alongside open recruitment.

1.      Members were advised that between 31st March 2022 and 31st March 2023, 128 new apprenticeships had started at Bristol City Council, contributing to the total of 834 apprenticeships which had started since May 2017.

2.      The workforce for BCC was currently 6,233 with 525 new employees and 3,106 for maintained schools with 889 new employees. The Apprenticeship Levy expiry for the last 12 months stood at £81k. There were currently 60 apprenticeships in the pipeline, which were due to go live in the next quarter.

3.      The recruitment controls put in place in 2022 had led to a suppressing impact on the number of new recruits as apprentices. In addition, uncertainty resulting from the required budget savings had led to a decrease of apprenticeship uptakes amongst BCC employees. However, in the last quarter there had been a significant rise in apprenticeship enrolments.

4.      Since May 2017 BCC had contributed over £6.57 million to the Levy, which had generated a government top up of £642k, providing a total input of £7.21 million. To date, £3.6 million had been spent and there was a further £1.055 million projected minimum spend over the coming year. It was intended to increase spend to approximately £109k per month and fully utilise annual contributions which required an increase in new starts to approximately 240 per annum or an average of circa 350 staff on programme at any one time.

Arising from members questions the following points were made/clarified –

1.      Future reports would contain a more detailed breakdown of apprentices by age, currently the information available showed that of the apprentices, 53 were under 20 years of age, 22 were BAME, 24 were disabled, 2 in construction services and 2 in care services.

2.      Recruitment processes included close working with the HR team to make recruitment part of the mainstream recruitment process including working with outside employment agencies.

3.      An Apprenticeship Stakeholder Group had been set up to work with trade unions, staff-led groups, apprentice ambassadors and departmental representatives. The Group met regularly, and its findings were fed back into the planning and development of apprenticeships and the interaction with a Talent and Development Steering Group. An apprenticeship data and performance dashboard was also being developed.

4.      Risk of losing levy funding was ongoing and although efforts were made to reduce the loss it was important not to increase apprenticeship numbers without the correct level of support for them, in essence it was about quality over quantity.

5.      The Council currently held about 200 vacancies, over a wide range of services, that were sometimes difficult to fill, and apprenticeships was one way that might go toward alleviating this. It was considered that this would not be inconsistent with the need to redeploy staff that were at risk of redundancy in other service.

6.      Utilising the apprenticeship scheme would also help with the retention of staff by enabling a ‘grow your own’ working environment.

7.      Important that applications for apprenticeships and jobs with the Council had a variety of methods so that potential employees from all walks of life had an equal opportunity to apply for positions and not face barriers to inclusion.

8.      It was noted that approximately 70% of apprentices had been retained by the Council at level 3 and 4, more work would be done to raise this.

9.      It was noted that the Levy did not include support for ongoing mentoring costs, only for training. The Head of HR said that other ways of mentoring could be considered eg, volunteers.

Resolved – that the report be noted.