Apprenticeships provide invaluable experience for those who take on apprentice roles, giving them a taste of a certain industry or type of role, which may shape their career for years to come.
For employers, apprentices serve as a valuable part of any team, providing support and new ideas – and occasionally an apprentice may choose to spend the rest of their career with the company and work their way up to senior positions. This is why National Apprenticeship Week (9-15 February) serves as a reminder of the great work apprentices do and the value they bring. But from a legal and tax perspective, what are the rights of apprentices? Here our experts take a look.
Employment laws protecting apprentices
An apprentice can be engaged under a contract of apprenticeship, an apprenticeship agreement or an approved English apprenticeship agreement as an employee. Generally speaking, the vast majority of the employment rights of an apprentice are the same as those that permanent employees benefit from.
This includes, therefore, the right under the Employment Rights Act 1996 not to be unfairly dismissed. Currently, that claim requires two years’ continuous service although the Labour government’s Employment Rights Act, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, will make protection from unfair dismissal a right after 6 months’ service. This change is to come into force from 1 January 2027.
Apprentices, whether employed under a contract of apprenticeship or an apprenticeship agreement, are covered by the definition of ‘worker’ under the Working Time Regulations 1998 so benefit from all rights that workers are entitled to under those regulations. Apprentices under the age of 18, but over compulsory school age, have additional rights as young workers, such as restrictions on ‘night work’.
Organisations employing apprentices must comply with all aspects of discrimination law under the Equality Act 2010 and not discriminate against any employee or worker because of a protected characteristic. With the majority of apprentices being younger workers, there is a particular risk of age discrimination. Government funding for apprentices’ training is generally tiered according to age, with higher funding for younger apprentices. There are so-called ‘incentive payments’ for recruiting a young apprentice (aged between 16 and 18), but it is risky for employers to put an upper age limit on applicants for their schemes based on funding eligibility. Unless the employer can show that the upper age limit is objectively justified this could dissuade persons above the age limit from applying for an apprentice position and could lead to complaints of direct and indirect age discrimination.
Employers should also ensure that terms of employment offered to apprentices are consistent with those offered to other employees of similar status and length of service. If, as is likely, apprentices are younger than the rest of the workforce, any differences in their terms and conditions may need to be objectively justified to avoid the risk of indirectly discriminating against apprentices on the grounds of their age. Note though, that it is not unlawful age discrimination to pay an apprentice less than the adult rate for the National Minimum Wage.
All apprentices will also be entitled to the full time equivalent of 20 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays, statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental pay and sick pay (subject to the usual qualifications).
Wages
Apprentices on an approved apprenticeship scheme are entitled to the Apprentice Minimum Wage, currently £7.55 per hour (£8.00 from 1 April 2026). Where this rate is paid, care is needed to ensure that those apprentices aged 19 and over, and who have completed the first 12 months of their apprenticeship, are moved onto the appropriate age-related National Minimum Wage band.
Taxes and levy
The apprenticeship levy is a ‘tax’ employers need to pay if their total payroll costs exceed £3m in a tax year (aggregated for group companies). The November 2025 Budget included an announcement of tweaks to the apprenticeship levy. The levy is also going to be reformed into a “Growth and Skills Levy” from April 2026. In addition, the Government has also earmarked an additional £725m to the apprenticeship system over the remainder of the current Parliament. The bulk of this money is expected to help alleviate an overspend in the apprenticeship budget. Other than the name change, the main tweaks to the levy are a halving of the period of time that an employer will have to spend its levy from 24 to 12 months and the removal of a 10% uplift to levy payers. Both changes will reduce the size of an employer’s ‘pot’ to fund an apprenticeship.
However, even with these changes, there are still benefits to employing apprentices. One advantage of employing qualifying apprentices under the age of 25 is that the employer does not pay any Class 1 NIC on the salary of qualifying apprentices under the age of 25 (provided that the apprentice earns less than £967 a week) and so long as they are on an approved UK government apprenticeship standard or framework.
Training
Any training time that is a part of the apprenticeship should be paid and must account for at least 20% of the apprentice’s normal working hours. The training time can be every week, every month or in a separate block of time.
Apprentices should not be asked to contribute financially to the ‘eligible costs’ of training, on-programme or end-point assessment. Section 109 of the Finance Act 2016 provides that an employer or deemed employer is not permitted to recover the apprenticeship levy charge from payments made to a worker.
Conclusion
According to the latest government figures, over 761,500 people were participating in an apprenticeship in England in 2024/25 which shows the size and scale of this employment type. As such, it’s clear to see that this is a popular and successful route to attracting young talent into an organisation and with the legal obligations being relatively straightforward to manage it is something that all employers should consider.
This article has been written alongside Fran Kirby, Graduate Solicitor Apprentice at Gateley Legal.