Apprentice pay during furlough
OK to furlough. Apprentices can be furloughed in the same way as other eligible employees under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and existing furloughed employees can even start a new apprenticeship. Whilst apprentices aren’t permitted to undertake any work for you while furloughed, the guidance makes clear that they can still take part in training, including apprenticeship off-the-job training, provided it does not provide services to, or generate revenue for or on behalf of, the employer. Where the training provider can continue to deliver off-the-job training remotely and via e-learning, a furloughed apprentice can therefore continue their apprenticeship while furloughed. In particular, the normal off-the-job training rules apply so, during furlough, training can be done as a block, i.e. more than one day a week, where this is agreed with the training provider. The 20% minimum off-the-job training over the length of the apprenticeship will still need to be satisfied.
NMW. However, where training is undertaken by a furloughed apprentice at your request, they are entitled to be paid at least the applicable national minimum wage (NMW) rate for all the time spent training. In some cases, the furlough payment of 80% of the apprentice’s regular wage, up to the value of £2,500 gross per month, will be sufficient to cover these training hours. But if it’s not, you must cover any shortfall between the amount you can claim for their wages under the CJRS and their appropriate NMW. This means you will need to top up the CJRS payment to ensure that the apprentice is paid at the applicable NMW rate for all training hours they completed. This is because time spent training is treated as working time for the purposes of the NMW calculations.
Top up. Where the furlough payment equates to less than the appropriate NMW entitlement for the training hours during the furlough period, you’ll need to pay the additional wages. This is likely to be the case where a furloughed apprentice is paid at or close to NMW levels. If you then ask them to complete training during furlough for a significant chunk of what would have been their usual working time, you need to be prepared to make up the wage shortfall for all these training hours.
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