Can my business receive funding for workforce training in Northern Ireland?
– Yes. Your business may be eligible for funding through Invest NI. Here’s what you need to know.
| If your business is an Invest NI client based in Belfast or elsewhere in Northern Ireland, two grants can put up to 50% of your English training costs back in your pocket: the Skills Advancement Grant, capped at £15,000 for smaller companies, and Skills for Growth, open to SMEs and large enterprises alike. Here’s how each one works, who qualifies, and how we can help you make the case. |
The condition worth knowing before you start
We get asked about Invest NI funding often enough that it’s worth being upfront about the one condition that catches people out. Both the Skills Advancement Grant and the Skills for Growth programme part of Invest NI are only available to companies that become Invest NI clients.
If you’re not a client yet, that’s the step to sort first, and it’s worth checking Invest NI’s client criteria before building a training plan around either grant.
Skills Advancement Grant: for smaller teams
This is the more accessible of the two grants for smaller employers. It covers external training, travel and accommodation costs at 50%, up to a maximum grant of £15,000. Once approved, the offer runs for 18 months with no option to extend, so it pays to have your training plan ready to go rather than open-ended.
To qualify, alongside being an Invest NI client, your business needs to meet all three of these:
- annual turnover of £10.2 million or less
- balance sheet total of £5.1 million or less
- an average of 50 employees or fewer
These thresholds apply to the Skills Advancement Grant only. They’re not stated as eligibility criteria for Skills for Growth, which is open to SME and large enterprise/FDI clients without that same size cap.
Skills for Growth: the wider programme
Skills for Growth isn’t limited to smaller companies, it’s open to SME and large enterprises. Support is variable, up to a maximum of 50% of eligible costs, and the eligible cost list is broader than the Skills Advancement Grant’s:
- worker wages for time spent on eligible training
- internal trainer costs
- external trainer costs
- travel and accommodation linked to the training
- materials linked specifically to the training
Large enterprise and FDI clients can have support run for up to 60 months, with extensions considered on a case by case basis. As with the Skills Advancement Grant, mandatory, induction, repeat and routine training are excluded.
Where in-company English training fits
Both grants are written around training generally, tested against productivity and competitiveness. That’s exactly the ground an English training programme sits on.
When we build a programme for a manufacturing floor, a pharmaceutical site, a logistics team or a customer-facing service desk, we’re working from real handovers, real safety briefings, real calls, so the outcome is measurable: fewer errors, faster handovers, more confident staff on the phone or the shop floor.
That fit doesn’t mean automatic approval. Your Client Executive or Business Advisor decides whether a specific programme qualifies, based on your training plan and business case. We can help you put that case together, drawing on what we’ve seen work in other successful training proposals.
| If your people work in logistics, we’ve put together a free guide covering the Top 50 Words for Logistics Teams, the terms that come up most often in warehousing, transport, and distribution. Each of the 50 terms is broken down with a plain-language definition and an example of how to use it in a sentence, giving your team the confidence to use them on the job. |
No competitive round to wait for
Some Invest NI programmes run as timed, competitive funding rounds. The Skills Advancement Grant and Skills for Growth work differently. As things stand, there’s no published deadline or funding window to watch for. Access runs through your Invest NI Client Executive, who arranges a visit with a Business Advisor to talk through your plan. That means the right time to raise it is now, in conversation with your Client Executive, not on some future application date.
Working with us on your application
If you’re an Invest NI client thinking about English training for your team, we can help in two ways. We’ll design the programme itself, built around your sector, your shifts and the English your people actually need on the job. And because we know how these grants are assessed, we can help you set out the business case your Client Executive will want to see: who needs the training, what it’s meant to change, and how you’d report on it.
Not sure whether your organisation qualifies? We can help you identify the most suitable funding route before recommending a programme. Get in touch and we’ll walk through it with you.
