Morrisons is transferring £2.1 million of its Apprenticeship Levy fund to Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust.
The Big 4 grocer has agreed to transfer the amount from its levy over the next two years, which will pay for 200 apprentices to be trained.
With Morrisons’ transfer, the Trust will not have to access the additional Government Apprenticeship Levy funding. The initiative would have cost the Trust £100,000, but will now instead be reinvested in patient care.
The first recruits were added this week, with the remaining new additions are set to join in the next six months.
“Over the last year, NHS staff have faced an exceptional challenge – so we want to continue to do our bit to help,” Morrisons group people director Clare Grainger said.
“As a Yorkshire business, we felt that this was a good opportunity to use some of our Apprenticeship Levy Funds to invest back into the region.
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“We wish all of the 200 new Yorkshire Ambulance Service apprentices every luck as they embark upon their new pandemic career.”
The Yorkshire Ambulance Service was the first to introduce the Ambulance Support Worker apprenticeship with the AMS’s Pathway to Paramedic scheme offering three programmes, which includes ambulance support worker, associate ambulance practitioner and paramedic apprenticeship.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service academy head Dawn Adams added: “We are very proud of our apprenticeship programmes and career development pathway.
“The Trust is highly committed to the provision of apprenticeships and very much appreciates this generous support from Morrisons. Establishing apprenticeships within our organisation has really energised the workforce and we have been rewarded with some great staff who otherwise may not have come to work with us.
“We are committed to the training and development of our workforce through our apprenticeship scheme and see this as a vital step in ensuring a future generation of ambulance staff.”
