A high-profile QC has worked with solicitors to write to the apprenticeships minister, Gillian Keegan, arguing that the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s provider relief scheme is “unlawful”.

James Goudie QC, a senior silk at 11KBW, as well as a deputy High Court judge and a master of the bench of the Inner Temple, was instructed by the law firm VWV to help present the case in a letter on behalf of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.

The letter from VWV, dated April 27 and shared with the media, comes after the ESFA excluded the majority of apprenticeship provision from the relief scheme launched last Friday on the basis it was not covered by the Cabinet Office’s coronavirus policy notice PPN 02/20.

Keegan had told MPs that where apprentices are recorded on the government’s digital system, the contractual relationship is between the employer and the provider, rather than the government.

The lawyers counter this argument, stating that “this is comprehensively wrong in at least three respects”.

“First, the source of funding is simply irrelevant. Second, there is a contractual relationship for the provision of apprenticeship services. Third, there is more than one contractual relationship and it is important to focus on the right one.”

Goudie goes on to explain that the “scope” of the Cabinet Office guidance states that it “covers goods, services and works contracts being delivered in the UK” – which all apprenticeship providers fall under.

“These are public service contracts, by way of duly procured framework agreements and all providers had to go through an application process with the ESFA to pass quality and financial thresholds to be admitted on to the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers,” Goudie said.

“Our clients are calling for no more, and no less, than the straightforward application to their situation of straightforward guidance.”

His letter states that the AELP’s case is that apprenticeships funded through the digital system have a “plain and obvious entitlement by way of legitimate expectation to supplier relief under the guidance” and it is “unclear on what the failure to pay is based”.

The failure not to provide supplier relief, if persisted in, will be “unlawful”, it continues.

“This is on each of two broad grounds. First, the failure is not in accordance with, but is contrary to, the guidance. Second, it is discriminatory.”

It goes on to list a number of aspects of the DfE’s decision that “display a multiplicity of legal errors” including that failure to comply with Cabinet Office guidance is an “abuse of power”.

The letter concludes: “We understand that you are conducting a review. We trust that the threatened injustice will speedily be removed.”

A DfE spokesperson confirmed they have received the letter from the AELP and “we will respond in due course”.

There are 1,624 main and employer providers on the register of apprenticeship training providers currently, of which 593 have non-levy allocations this year, amounting to £690 million.

That means there are 1,031 providers that only have access to levy funding, and are therefore not eligible for the supplier relief.

The DfE has also confirmed that non-levy apprenticeships funded via an employer transfer or that have recently transitioned on to the government’s digital system will not be eligible for supplier relief.

FE Week analysis shows that of the 198,632 apprenticeship starts in the first six months of 2019-20, around two-thirds of the provision would be ineligible for supplier relief.

The provider with the largest number of starts in that period was Lifetime Training.

FE Week analysis shows that of their 10,000 recruits, more than 90 per cent were funded through the government’s digital system and are therefore ineligible.

Lifetime’s chief executive, Alex Khan, told this newspaper they will not be applying for the financial support as a result.

But Khan is not expecting the lack of additional help to have a big impact on his business, as it may do for others.

“Whilst the government furlough scheme is in place the main cost burden for Lifetime can be managed. However, it is worth noting that we do not have many training facilities or academies that we are exposed to funding whilst they are vacant,” he said.

“This is not true, however, for large portions of the sector, where the financial exposure to such indirect costs will make things incredibly difficult.”

The dramatic impact of the coronavirus crisis on apprentice recruitment is laid bare for the first time in a survey of over 300 providers.

Responding to an FE Week request for data on the last day of April, 304 providers said they had between them planned 13,732 starts in the month but only achieved 2,693, missing their pre-coronavirus expectations by 80 per cent.

And 137 of the providers that responded, whilst planning 3,756 starts in the month, said they had not been able to start a single apprentice.

The findings will come as a concern to the apprenticeships minister, Gillian Keegan, who earlier in the week had said her “biggest worry is the recruitment of new apprentices”.

On an FE Week webcast Keegan said the ESFA would be receiving data on starts in early May “so we’ll have a couple of weeks probably to look at that and analyse it”.

She acknowledged that “potentially businesses and others are not going to have this top of mind right now” but was concerned about “how to keep the whole pipeline going with all this uncertainty”.

Many providers spoke openly about the impact on recruitment this month, with employers hit by the lockdown and focused on little else other than survival.

Grant Glendinning, principal at Carlisle College, said they had no starts in April, despite originally planning for 180, covering construction, engineering, motor vehicle mechanics, accounting, business administration and health and social care.

He told FE Week: “There is huge disruption to the apprenticeship ‘supply chain’ currently. Employers are in survival mode, and there is little capacity for them to focus on training over business continuity.”

Lee Acton, chief executive at Skillnet Limited, planned 120 automotive starts in April but in reality there were none “as in the main they would have no members of staff to mentor them as they are either furloughed or working flat out to deal with existing business”.

Other providers continue to start apprentices, but far fewer than planned.

HIT Training, one of the largest training providers in the country, had 102 starts out of 700, representing just 15 per cent of the plan. Managing director, Jill Whittaker, said: “80 per cent of the hospitality sector is on furlough, and the care sector is either closed (early years) or extremely busy (healthcare and adult care).”

But not all providers have seen reductions.

Jo Phillips, apprentice operations manager at Staffordshire University, said all 34 starts on police-related apprenticeships that had been planned did take place in April.

Responses to the survey suggested the ability to continue to start apprentices was highly dependent on the industry.

In the case of Capital City College Training, with 27 starts out of a planned 100, their managing director, Jackie Chapman, said they haven’t recruited the planned starts in healthcare, construction and catering but they did go ahead in project management, pharmacy and management.

The provider feedback also suggested that where starts are still taking place, they were typically from public sector organisations.

One respondent from a large apprenticeship provider with 200 out of a planned 400 starts in April said: “The impact is almost a clear split between public and private sector. The public sector has shown significant growth in comparison to normal months.

“Whereas, as a provider, we traditionally see 10 to 15 per cent of total starts being from the public sector, April has seen this jump to almost 60 per cent. Even this number in comparison to a ‘standard’ month is showing comfortable growth. This has been heavily driven by cohort level starts in central government departments.”

Keegan was keen to point out earlier this week that it was important to make sure “everybody is aware that furloughed employees can start apprenticeships”.

September is the “peak” month for recruitment, she said, so “we really need to stay close to this over the next few months to really do the best job we can”.

A cross-party group of MPs is fighting to save a land-based college they fear could be closed following the launch of an FE Commissioner review of its provision.

Conservative MP Neil Hudson, who represents Penrith and the Border in Cumbria, has been joined by other local members of parliament, including former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and former education select committee member Trudy Harrison in an attempt to preserve Newton Rigg College.

FE Commissioner Richard Atkins has been ordered to review the provider by its parent college.

Askham Bryan College, based 100 miles away in York, took over the running of Newton Rigg from the University of Cumbria in 2011.

While Askham Bryan has remained tight-lipped on the reasons behind the review, Hudson told FE Week it is “looking at how the needs of the students can be supported and what provision is required locally and what alternative options are required for delivery”.

The governing body will consider the findings and decide what further action is needed

The worry for the community and himself is “what does this mean for the long-term future of the college?”. His understanding was that the review would look at whether its provision could be run elsewhere.

Because of that, he decided to launch a campaign to secure that future and seek support from like-minded stakeholders to discuss “viable future plans for the college”, which they can present to Atkins and the Department for Education.

Hudson is currently running a petition for people to show their support for Newton Rigg College, which he said has been signed by over 900 people at the time of writing.

He said the college, which is over a century old, had a “tremendous” heritage and is “unique” in the county for specialising in land-based sectors.

Newton Rigg offers apprenticeships between levels 2 and 4, as well as a number of short courses, in a range of land-based disciplines, including agriculture, arboriculture and animal and vet nursing.

Just eight months ago, plans were being drawn up for a new state-of-the-art “high tech” centre for the college, after a £2.4 million dairy unit was opened there in 2014, followed by a £450,000 sheep husbandry centre in 2017.

Hudson said the Covid-19 crisis had put into “sharp relief the importance of training people up to go into the land-based economy” as the pandemic highlighted the importance of both food security and “good supplies of locally provided food”.

The FE Commissioner was invited to carry out the review in December, according to the Department for Education, and when it is finished, the findings will be given to the college, who will have discretion on when to publish it.

Askham Bryan principal Tim Whitaker said it was “an independent review of educational provision”, anticipated to conclude in May.

“The governing body will consider the findings and decide what further action is needed,” he said, adding:

“All courses at Newton Rigg campus are continuing as planned for this academic year, 2019-20.”

The college declined to comment on why it had commissioned the review.

Were Newton Rigg to close, the nearest FE college would be Carlisle College – which is over an hour away on public transport.

Hudson’s petition can be found here.

He is not the first MP to stand up publicly in recent months for under-threat local campuses.

In February, Conservative MP for Rother Valley, Alexander Stafford, organised a meeting with Atkins over plans by the RNN Group to shut its “under-utilised” campus in Dinnington, South Yorkshire.

After Cornwall College Group announced plans at the start of the year to sell off its Saltash campus in her constituency, Conservative MP Sheryll Murray called for an investigation into how the group used a £30 million government bailout the year before.

And former Conservative MP and minister Margot James held a debate in parliament last October to raise her concerns with minister Michelle Donelan over the sale by BMet of Stourbridge College, in her constituency.

Meanwhile, Labour MP Mike Amesbury has called on Warrington & Vale Royal College principal Nichola Newton to stand down over plans to sell off the college’s Hartford campus, telling FE Week last month that a “more concerted effort” should have been made by the college to develop “a good FE offer” at the campus.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has today launched a new apprentice satisfaction survey.

It comes a week after the Department for Education scrapped this year’s FE Choices learner satisfaction survey, which included apprentices, on the basis to do so would “reduce the impact and burden on the public during this [coronavirus] crisis”.

The IfATE’s online survey will be run by its panel of apprentices, which has recently recruited 20 new members.

Questions will focus on the duration and quality of training apprentices across the country are receiving as well as their end-point assessment experience.

They will also be asked for the average percentage of their working hours spent doing off-the-job training.

It will also ask apprentices for comments on the impact that Covid-19 is having on their learning.

Jennifer Coupland, chief executive of the IfATE, said: “I’m delighted that this new survey will help us to gather more information and feedback from apprentices than we have ever done before.”

She added that she would like to “welcome” the institute’s new apprentice panel members, who have joined six existing members staying on for a second year.

“They will play an important role in providing the institute, along with employers who help us develop new apprenticeships, with invaluable insight into the experiences of the people who matter most – the apprentices themselves,” Coupland said.

“This is more important than ever in these challenging times.”

The institute said each apprentice panel member has been tasked with supporting “apprenticeship standards related to their own apprenticeship, grouped into different ‘occupational routes’”.

They report to institute-run groups of employers who make decisions over the future of apprenticeships, known as “route panels”, as well as the IfATE’s board.

The apprentice satisfaction survey will close on 29 May. It can be viewed here:  https://www.cognitoforms.com/InstituteForApprenticeships1/apprenticeshippanelsurvey.

The members of the IfATE’s panel of apprentices:

Amber Storey, Historic Environment Advice Assistant (level 4)

Joel Roach, Chartered Manager Degree (level 6)

Saarah Zaman, HR Consultant (level 5)

Luke Grayston, Joiner (level 2)

Jade Jones, Digital Marketer (level 4)

Jamilah Simpson, (former) Digital Marketer (level 3)

Marcus Kaye, Data Analyst (level 4)

Ekansh Sharma, Digital and technology solutions (level 6)

Amelia Russell, Business Administrator (Level 3)

Dillon Jones, Installation Electrician/ Maintenance Electrician (Level 3)

Raisa Matadar, Engineering Technician (Level 3)

Zuza Wnekowska, Aerospace engineer (level 6)

Louis Curtis, Mineral Products Technology Higher Apprenticeship (Level 5)

Leon Jacobs, Manufacturing Engineer (level 6)

Kat Pricos, Food Industry Technical Degree (Level 6)

Benjamin McKenna, Science Electrical Engineering Technician (level 5)

John Alfred, Hair Professional (Level 2)

Jacqueline Kankam-Hoppe, Advanced and Creative Hair Professional (Level 3)

Nikki Greaves, Laboratory scientist (Level 5)

Sam Davies, Laboratory Technician (Level 3)

Angela Hogg, Digital Technology Solutions Specialist (Level 6)

Samantha Ross, Solicitor (Level 7)

Ricardo Costa, Commercial Procurement and Supply (Level 4)

Molly Parnham, Junior Management Consultant (level 4)

David John, Bus and Coach engineering technician (Level 3)

Joel Shevlin, Transport Planning Technician (level 3)