The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) have recently announced three significant updates affecting the woodworking and joinery manufacturing sector. To help our members who are CITB levy payers understand how the updates might impact them, BWF Training Manager Tony Batchelor has pulled together the following summary.
Changes to CITB levy liability
As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, the CITB implemented a levy holiday. By law CITB must collect the Levy but have developed and announced proposals to minimise the impact for all Levy payers.
CITB will subsequently be asking for no Levy payments until September 2020, at which point employers will have a choice to pay up-front or over a 12 month period to August 2021. In addition, next year’s Levy bills will be delayed and cut by 50%. This bill can also be paid in one go or spread over September 2021 – February 2022. This means an overall Levy cut of 25% over the next two years. It is anticipated that the Levy collection will then return to ‘normal’ rates and collection periods from March 2022.
CITB consensus suspended this year
In response to employer and trade body feedback, CITB will be focusing full-time on helping the industry meet the challenges posed by COVID-19. The decision has therefore been taken to suspend the consensus process, which was due to take place later this year. This suspension has been agreed with the Department for Education.
Instead, CITB will be speaking to employers and industry groups to seek their views on CITB plans for next year. Over this summer, CITB will seek the industry’s views on the required skills strategy for 2021-23 and the Levy to fund it. They will then submit new Levy Proposals to the Department for Education to enable it to present a new Levy Order to Parliament.
CITB publish Skills Stability Plan 2020-21
CITB have published a new business plan for the current financial year, to March 2021. The plan outlines how CITB intend to support the construction industry with the skills it needs, including assistance to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. The main emphasis will be on supporting apprenticeships and on direct funding for employers’ skills needs through the Grants Scheme and the Skills and Training Funds. The plan outlines the full range of financial commitments to support this. CITB are forecasting levy income to fall by £166 million over the two-year period.
The full plan can be viewed here: https://www.citb.co.uk/Documents/about-us/missions_plans/skills_stability_plan.pdf
If you are a BWF member and have any queries relating to the summary below, please contact Tony by email – tony.batchelor@bwf.org.uk
