Training Aid to support to Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and North East of England Enterprises 2009-13 X93/2009 1) Member State United Kingdom 2) Region Yorkshire and Humber and North West of England and One North East 3) Title of aid scheme Training Aid to support Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and North East of England Enterprises 2009-13 4) Government or statutory bodies authorised to implement the Scheme The implementing bodies are: • Yorkshire Forward: Regional Development Agency for Yorkshire and Humber • North West Development Agency (NWDA); and • One North East (ONE): Regional Development Agency for the North East of
England
The implementing bodies have a number of statutory functions, including furthering the economic development and regeneration in Yorkshire and Humber, the North West of England and the North East of England. 5) Legal basis The legal basis of the scheme is: The Regional Development Act 1998 The Industrial Development Act 1982 European Communities Act 1972 European Communities Act (finance) Act 2008 Industrial Training Act 1982 (Training Boards) Further Education and Training Act 2007 Learning and Skills Act 2000
6) Duration Aid under this scheme may be granted until 31 December 2013.
7) Basis of scheme Commission Regulation No 800/2008 of 6 August 2008 OJ L 214, 9.8.2008, p. 3–47 (the regulation) declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the common market in application of Articles 87 and 88 of the Treaty (General Block Exemption Regulation) As such, the Scheme is exempt from the notification requirement of Article 88(3), provided that any aid awarded under the Scheme fulfils the relevant conditions of the Regulation. The scheme is based on previous scheme XT30/2008: Training Aid support to Yorkshire and Humber enterprises, which was notified by Yorkshire Forward under the Training Exemption Regulation on 11th March 2008. 8) Exclusions This scheme will be aimed at enterprises in all sectors in Yorkshire and Humber and the North West of England and the North East of England. This scheme does not apply to undertakings excluded by Art 1 of the Regulation: • aid financing the establishment and financing of distribution networks in other countries; • undertakings in difficulty, other than SMEs that have been incorporated for less than 3 years unless they are insolvent under UK legislation; • any beneficiary subject to an outstanding recovery following a previous Commission declaring aid illegal. 9) Objectives of the scheme The objectives of the scheme are: 1) To raise the general skill levels of workers in enterprises within Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and the North East of England to contribute to their long term and sustainable advantage, 2) To raise the general skill levels of workers in enterprises within Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and the North East of England to develop a pool of skilled workers with transferable skills that improves their employability and facilitates enhanced employment opportunities that will share the benefits of training beyond the initial aid. 3) To raise the specific skill levels of workers in enterprises within Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and the North East of England to contribute to the medium to long term and sustainable advantage of the enterprises. 4) To encourage enterprises in Yorkshire and Humber, North West of England and the North East of England to increase their levels of employment of disadvantage or disabled workers. 10) Mechanism for granting of aid under the scheme Yorkshire Forward, North West Development Agency and One North East will use Article 39 “Training Aid” of the Regulation, to provide, at its discretion, an amount of aid, within the relevant threshold, that is the minimum necessary to support recipient companies to improve their competitive advantage. 11) Scope of the scheme
The scheme will support a range of training provision the details of which can be found under Helping Business: workforce/skills or Skills on the Yorkshire Forward website at http://www.nwda.co.uk/areas-of-work/skills--education.aspx on the NWDA website and at www.onenortheast.co.uk/page/stateaid.com on the ONE website The scheme will comply with the definitions of general and specific training as laid down in Article 38 of the General Block Exemption Regulation as detailed below: “General” training means training (outside of the national curriculum which is a general measure and therefore a non aid) involving tuition which is not applicable only or principally to the employee’s present or future position in the undertaking, but which provides qualifications that are largely transferable to other undertakings or field so of work. Training shall be considered “general” if, for example: a) it is jointly organised by different independent undertakings or where employees of different undertakings may avail themselves of the training; b) it is recognised, certified or validated by public authorities or bodies or by other bodies or institutions on which a Member State or the Community has conferred the necessary powers. “Specific” training means training involving tuition directly and principally applicable to the employee’s present or future position in the undertaking and providing qualifications which are not or only to a limited extent transferable to other undertakings or fields of work. Training aid will be delivered within the framework of the Regulation either: 1) By a number of intermediary delivery bodies or recognised, approved or accredited training providers; or 2) Be brokered by intermediary delivery bodies to recognised, approved or accredited training providers. 3) By Yorkshire Forward, North West Development Agency or One North East to the undertaking. The intermediary delivery bodies/account managers and recognised, approved or accredited training providers will either manage the work at market rates or will be required to keep transparent, separate accounts to cover the discharge of their duties. There will therefore be no aid at the level of the intermediary delivery bodies or recognised, approved or accredited training providers, either due to the application of the market economy investor principle or because they will be treated as research organisations or innovation centres under Community Framework for State aid for Research and Development and Innovation OJ C 323 of 30.12.2006, section 3.2.1, which states that: “The research organisation, acting as an agent, renders a service to the undertaking acting as principal in situations where (i) the agent receives payment of an adequate remuneration for its service and (ii) the principal specifies the terms and conditions of this service. Typically, the principal will own the results of the project and carry the risk of failure. When a research organisation carries out such a contract, there will normally be no State aid passed to the undertaking through the research organisation, if one of the following conditions is fulfilled: (1) the research organisation provides its service at market price; or (2) if there is no market price, the research organisation provides its service at a price which reflects its full cost plus a reasonable margin.” In relation to the current scheme, the “research organisation” is equivalent to the “intermediary delivery body or recognised, approved or accredited training provider”, the “undertaking” is the “recipient SME”, and the “principal” is “Yorkshire Forward”. In meeting the above conditions this allows intermediary delivery body or recognised,
approved or accredited training provider to be either 1) competitively procured, where applicable, in accordance with the EC public procurement regulations or 2) grant funded to deliver the service, without the incurring State Aid at the level of the delivery body or training provider. Thus the above intermediary delivery bodies to recognised, approved or accredited training providers effectively qualify as not for profit arms or conduits of state and who in turn provide training to undertakings within the framework of the Regulation. The aid exempted in this scheme may be cumulated with any other aid within the terms of Art 7 of the Regulation as long as those aid measures are for different identifiable, eligible costs. It may not be cumulated with any other aid exempted under the Regulation or de minimis aid or Community funding for the same eligible costs if that would result in exceeding the highest aid intensity or aid amount applicable. 12) Forms of aid Aid for Training support may take the following form: “Grants� (grants, vouchers or subsidies) will enable the recipient enterprise to purchase training from recognised, approved or accredited training suppliers. 13) Maximum aid intensity, notification threshold and eligible costs. Each award of aid will respect the relevant aid intensity ceiling stipulated in Article 39 of the General Block Exemption regulation and will not exceed those shown in the following table: Small Enterprise General training Specific training Additional percentage points for Disabled or disadvantaged workers Small enterprises Medium enterprises
Medium Enterprise
Large Enterprise
60% 25%
60% 25%
60% 25%
10%
10%
10%
20% 10%
The maximum aid intensity will be 80% of eligible costs. The aid intensity granted in the in the marine transport sector may reach 100% of the eligible costs, whether the training project concerns specific or general training, provided that the following conditions are met: (a) the trainee shall not be an active member of the crew but shall be supernumerary on board; and (b) the training shall be carried out on board ships entered on Community registers. Aid must not exceed â‚Ź2 million per undertaking per project. 14) Eligible costs and conditions All eligible costs must be transparent and directly and exclusively related to the project.
“Grants” will be made available to cover the following eligible costs: (a) trainers’ personnel costs; (b) trainers’ and trainees’ travel expenses, including accommodation; (c) other current expenses such as materials and supplies directly related to the project; (d) depreciation of tools and equipment, to the extent that they are used exclusively for the training project; (e) cost of guidance and counselling services with regard to the training project; (f) trainees’ personnel costs and general indirect costs (administrative costs, rent, overheads) up to the amount of the total of the other eligible costs referred to in points (a) to (e) as regards the trainees’ personnel costs, only the hours during which the trainees actually participate in the training, after deduction of any productive hours, may be taken into account. 15) Claw back and Overage The funding agreement will stipulate the right for the granting authorities and or delivery bodies to seek repayment in the event of breach of the conditions of the award. The specific conditions will follow the principles in the UK government’s Managing Public Money1 and DAO(GEN) 07/05 – Clawback: Disposal of publicly funded assets. 16) Administration Although there is no defined budget for aid under the scheme, it has been estimated that the total expenditure from 1st January 2009 – 31st December 2013 will be in the region of £20 million in Yorkshire and Humber, £20 million in the North West of England and £20 million in the North East of England. The implementing bodies, at their discretion, will grant fund projects from their annual programme budgets that support the following published strategies, plans and programmes: 1) Yorkshire and Humber: Regional Economic Strategy 2006-2015 , Corporate Plan 2008-2011 and associated value for money criteria, 2) North West of England: the equivalent documents available from the website www.nwda.co.uk 3) One North East; and the equivalent document available at www.onenortheast.co.uk When using this scheme and ensure compliance with the GBER rules the implementing body will communicate its usage to the Commission so that it can be published in the Official Journal of the European Union by providing the summary information required in the GBER Annex III Part I and II; for large investment projects Annex II would also be completed. The information will be provided using the State Aid Notification Interactive (SANI) system within 20 working days of its effective date. This notice of the details of the scheme shall be published on the Yorkshire Forward and NWDA websites: http://www.yorkshire-forward.com/about/our-funding/stateaid/notification-scheme, http://www.nwda.co.uk/areas-of-work/business/supportingbusiness.aspx and www.onenortheast.co.uk/page/stateaid.com
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Chapter 5 and Annex 5.2.
Yorkshire Forward will ensure that detailed records are kept of the individual aid granted under this scheme. As a minimum this should include the • scheme title • Commission block exemption reference number • the decision date • the name and address of recipients • the amount of aid and evidence of gap calculations • the date and amount of aid payments • the status of any undertaking where the level of aid is dependent on its status as an SME2. The records will be kept for 10 years from the date of the last payment. The implementing body will provide the Commission with an annual report of expenditure under this scheme, including the internet address of its publication. If the Commission requests information necessary for it to assess whether the aid conditions have been complied with the funding body will provide it within the agreed time period. X93/2009
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The SME model declaration can be found at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=OJ:C:2003:118:0005:0015:EN:PDF