Part 4: Apprenticeships Section 24: Public sector apprenticeship targets
This section will insert new sections A9 (public sector apprenticeship targets) and A10 (further provision about apprenticeship targets) into Chapter A1 of Part 1 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 (the 2009 Act). That Chapter concerns English apprenticeships.
	New section A9 will provide the Secretary of State with a power to set targets for public bodies in relation to the number of apprentices who work for them and new section A10 will make further provision. The apprentices must be employed under approved English apprenticeship agreements (see section A1 of the 2009 Act) or any apprenticeship agreements based on frameworks which are not yet phased out under provision made under section 115(9) of the Deregulation Act 2015.
	The public bodies within scope of an apprenticeship target will be set out in regulations. These may cover public authorities or bodies with functions of a public nature that receive some form of funding from public money. The intention is to ensure that the Secretary of State is able to set targets for any public sector body, including central Government departments, non-departmental public bodies and other bodies which exercise public functions. The Secretary of State has discretion to decide not to include certain bodies or categories of bodies in the regulations.
	The Secretary of State has the freedom and flexibility on how to apply a target; the Secretary of State may set different targets for different bodies, groups of bodies or parts of bodies. Alternatively, the Secretary of State may wish to set one target for all of the bodies. When choosing to set a target, the Secretary of State may set different targets in different periods. The Secretary of State may take into account the particular circumstances of a body and not apply any, or a particular, target to it.
	There is a duty on all public bodies for which targets are set to have regard to the applicable apprenticeship targets and any applicable guidance the Secretary of State may issue.
	In order to determine which public bodies should be in scope of this measure, or to carry out other functions under the new section, the Secretary of State needs to be able to access information about the workforce of public bodies. This section provides a power for the Secretary of State to require anybody in the public sector to provide information to the Secretary of State that is needed for that reason. This may be information in relation to their numbers of employees, or workforce planning.
	To ensure public bodies are having due regard to the target and in order to increase transparency there will be a duty for public bodies to publish information on progress towards meeting the apprenticeships targets annually. Public bodies will also be required to send this information to the Secretary of State. There is also provision for the Secretary of State to make regulations under which bodies would be required to send separate, additional information regarding the target. This may be information on why they were unable to meet the target, or their future plans to try and meet the target.
	This provision forms part of the law of England and Wales but applies to England only. Where public bodies operate across the UK, the target will be set as a certain proportion of their England-based workforce.