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15 April 2026

Tag: subcontracting

College in £37m debt given permission to carry out banned tactical subcontracting

The Department for Education appears to have given a cash-strapped college special treatment, after it endorsed subcontracting to meet short-term funding objectives. Lambeth College, which is dependent on government bailouts, “embarked on a significant programme of subcontracting” to make up for a recruitment shortfall last year, according to its recently published 2017/18 accounts. The college […]

Massive subcontracting top-slices finally revealed

Subcontracting top-slices exceeded £100 million last year, and 28 per cent of prime providers were charging more than 20 percent, FE Week can reveal. The long-overdue subcontracting figures for 2016/17 have finally been published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. FE Week’s analysis of the data has shown that just under a third of […]

Leicester city council in row over ‘brokerage-style’ levy deal

Leicester city council is the latest public body accused of diverting apprenticeship levy funding away from frontline learning via a brokerage-style deal with a third party. It awarded a contract to a firm known as Salad Skills last October, to operate as a “quality-assurance partner”. This role involves identifying suitable providers to train the council’s […]

Stephenson College challenged over £100,000 tactical subcontracting

A college that charged up to 57 per cent in management fees has been found to be attempting to use up £100,000 of skills funding with tactical subcontracting. But the Education and Skills Funding Agency has refused to say whether it will take enforcement action over what appears to be a clear breach of funding […]

ESFA misses chance to get tough on wasteful subcontracting

The ESFA must enforce rules that are supposed to be putting a stop to wasteful short-term subcontracting. The example uncovered this week showed Stephenson College seeking to find subcontractors to use up £100,000 of funding by the end of July. That’s less than three months from the start of the contract to the end, proving […]

Ofsted’s new provider monitoring and subcontracting visits explained

Paul Joyce, one of the inspectorate’s head skills honchos, lays out the thinking behind the two new forms of visit Ofsted will be making in the FE sector Ofsted recently announced it would be conducting two new types of monitoring visit. The first, as announced by HM chief inspector Amanda Spielman last November, are monitoring […]

Providers told to declare subcontracting fees by late April

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has finally sent providers long-delayed templates to let them declare their subcontracting fees. Individual lead providers previously had to publish their annual figures by the end of every November every year. But the rules changed for 2016/17, and providers are now expected to inform the ESFA of their figures, […]

ESFA to ‘review’ rules on subcontracting fees and charges

Subcontracting fees and charges will be reviewed to ensure government funding is being used for “recognised costs”, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has revealed. “In the coming months, we will be reviewing… aspects of the subcontracting funding rules,” it said in its announcement, published online last night. This includes “subcontracting fees and charges, so […]