CSA Apprenticeship case study: Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA)

Carol Jackson is an Apprenticeships Manager at the Animal and Plant Health Agency APHA (part of the Government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs - Defra).

Due to significant ongoing regulatory developments, we are going through a period of rapid growth having recently expanded our workforce of Plant Health & Seeds Inspectors from 150 to 500+ with plans to take on more over the next few years. To make this happen, we had to change our recruitment model from hiring trainee inspectors one at a time to taking on large cohorts all at once, who could be simultaneously trained up in the highly complex regulatory environment in which we operate.

This presented a perfect opportunity to meet our targets on apprentice numbers as a Government agency and utilise the Apprenticeship Levy, while onboarding and upskilling a future workforce who could help us meet our increasingly complex regulatory responsibilities. As part of the recruitment drive to grow our team of trainee inspectors, we decided to offer the apprenticeship route to those with a Science A-Level alongside the traditional entry route for those with biological Science Degrees. Having people who can undertake labour intensive inspection tasks on ‘everything that is green and grows’, but also understand wider implications of complying with complex national and international legislation is vital for us. The Level 4 Regulatory Compliance Officer Apprenticeship provides an ideal pathway for our needs which also allows our new inspectors to work alongside our experienced inspectors and take part in more specialised internal training.

We chose to work with Credit Services Association (CSA) as the training provider because of their track record of quality delivery tailored to unique organisational needs and their background as a well established trade association in a heavily regulated niche sector. From the outset, they worked hard to understand what we were trying to achieve and took the time to understand the specific legislation we have to comply with, and how we work as an organisation within the regulatory environment. They were keen to not only run sessions for us on exactly how the apprenticeship programme would best work for our line managers and apprentices across the UK, but also spend time attending sessions on how our Plant Health & Seeds Inspection function works so that the programme could be tailored to our specific needs. We needed flexibility when it came to the 20% ‘off the job’ training bit of the apprenticeship to make it work around our internal training and around the varied roles that inspectors play, which can involve a lot of peaks and troughs in workload. The CSA team came up with solutions we could use, which maintained the quality of the apprenticeship while making it practical to undertake as part of the role.

Once we had everything in place, we were able to attract and recruit 42 candidates from a range of backgrounds, many of whom fulfilled the criteria to go down the traditional route but wanted to do the Apprenticeship anyway because of what it offered them in terms of vital transferable skills. We were initially expecting to mainly attract school leavers but have ended up with a cohort of apprentices aged between 20 and 63! Since Plant Health makes up only 10-20% of the APHA workforce, this gives us a huge number of apprentices per head of employees, and we are keen to use this as a benchmark for how an ‘apprentice first’ recruitment strategy can work.

These apprentices were taken on at the same time as a cohort of trainee inspectors with degrees which will allow us to compare the quality and competence of each group. What we have found so far is that the apprentices have been able to grasp the huge volumes of specific plant health & seeds legislation that we deal with. We are also hopeful that under the Apprenticeship scheme they will quickly gain a wider understanding of the wider context of regulatory compliance, which will not only give them wider career prospects, but also enable them to more effectively fulfil their role with us. They are also open minded to ever-changing legislative requirements and understand the need to undertake ongoing training and development as ‘active learners’.

Although they are learning about compliance in a wider context, key elements of the Apprenticeship directly relate to their ‘day job’. One of the first assignments on the Apprenticeship was to reflect on and write up the internal training they’d done with us, which helped to reinforce what they were learning at work. We’re now thinking ahead to the Apprenticeship project they will need to complete and working with the CSA team and line managers to try and come up with topics that will be useful to the business, allowing us to complete pieces of work that we would need to do anyway.

Apprentices are also benefitting from the additional support mechanisms that they get from the Apprenticeship and the camaraderie of sharing the experience with other APHA apprentices, who are based at different locations, via regular apprenticeship workshops and online social opportunities.

We recently received the first quarterly progress report from CSA. 40 of the 42 apprentices have completed all monitoring tasks and are making great progress. One is not quite up to date but there are no issues and the other has been on sick leave. This sort of progress at such an early stage is great considering that they’ve also had a lot of intensive internal training to complete. Feedback from line managers, some of whom were initially daunted by managing apprentices, has been positive too. They tell us that apprentices are enthusiastic, capable, and keen to complete all their training and get out there and do the job. Some apprentices are already starting shadow inspectors and do some of the inspections themselves.

The CSA team has been very responsive throughout the process so far, going the extra mile to gain and take on board feedback, and adapt the programme and our and our learners’ changing needs. The fact that our apprentices have hit the ground running and started progressing, developing, and adding value to the organisation straight away is a very good sign of things to come.”

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