The Employers handbook

Section 7: Support and roll of the employer & guidance for staff under 18 year olds.

Under-18 Safeguarding Acknowledgement

This section supplements Section 7 (employer role & under-18 guidance). All employers of apprentices under 18 must sign our Safeguarding Acknowledgement Form at enrolment.

Your Legal Commitments (Signature Required)

By signing, you confirm:

  • No solo property viewings or site visits – Always supervised by DBS-checked adult (18+). Pre-visit risk assessment mandatory.
  • No lone working with clients/public – All interactions supervised or within earshot of senior staff.
  • No unsupervised handling of client money, keys, or sensitive documents (Estate Agents Act 1979).
  • DBS-checked workplace mentor appointed – Enhanced DBS provided to KTA; completes our training.
  • Working hours compliance – Max 8 hrs/day, 40 hrs/week, 30-min break after 4.5 hrs, 12-hr daily/48-hr weekly rest.

Incident Reporting

Immediate contact: KTA Safeguarding Lead
Chloe Nancarrow | chloe@knightsltd.co.uk | 020 8068 7050
Document within 24 hours; follow KTA procedures (KTA-112 Policy).

What Happens Next

  1. KTA sends personalised Acknowledgement Form (template above for Laura Green)
  2. Employer signs electronically confirming all commitments
  3. DBS mentor verification completed before programme start
  4. Form stored on CRM for Ofsted compliance

Non-compliance risks programme suspension. This signed commitment demonstrates your safeguarding diligence to Ofsted.

Signed form = legal undertaking under Children Act 1989. Contact James Coates for support.

Click here to view our safeguarding policies and report form.

Before enrolling a member of staff (new or existing), you should appoint them a work mentor. This role isn’t necessarily about line managing and disciplinary, but coaching and passing on soft skills such as:

  • Building rapport
  • Team work
  • Integrity
  • Positivity
  • Professionalism

To support you, KTA will provide you with a monthly progress tracker, quarterly reviews with tutor and learners, and mid & endpoint appraisals with an account manager to review the service, voice your feedback and understand additional progression options for current staff, new incentive schemes and recruitment solutions.

Employing someone for the first time

If you are taking on an employee for the first time and need a bit of free advice and guidance, use this 2 links to help:

  • General advice around what every employer should consider when it comes to making sure the company it prepared and staff are safe to work: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/employers-health-and-safety-responsibilities
  • Set-up a free chat around employment law with ACAS here: https://employersdirect.org.uk/employment-law-advice/ 

Rules on working hours for people under 18

If someone is 15, 16 or 17 years old, they might be legally classed as a ‘young worker’. A young worker is someone who has reached school leaving age but is under 18.

School leaving age is different in England, Scotland and Wales. Check school leaving ages on GOV.UK. The Working Time Regulations 1998 sets the legal working time limits for young workers.

Whether they’re an employee or worker can also affect their rights.

If you think an employer is not following the law, it’s best to raise the issue with the employer first.

When young people can start work

A young person can start full-time work once they’ve reached school leaving age. Before school leaving age, the work they can do is restricted and depends on their local authority.

Between their school leaving age and 18, a young person in England must do one of the following:

  • full-time education or training, such as school or college
  • work-based learning, such as an apprenticeship
  • working or volunteering (for 20 hours or more a week) while in part-time education or training

In Scotland and Wales this law does not apply. Once a young person has reached the minimum school leaving age, they can go into full-time employment.

Working hours and rest breaks for young workers

By law, young workers must not work more than:

  • 8 hours a day
  • 40 hours a week

They must also have, as a minimum:

  • a 30-minute break if their working day is longer than 4.5 hours
  • 12 hours’ rest in any 24-hour period in which they work (for example, between one working day and the next)
  • 48 hours’ (2 days) rest taken together, each week or – if there is a good business reason why this is not possible – at least 36 hours’ rest, with the remaining 12 hours taken as soon as possible afterwards Find out more about making up for missed rest breaks

Pay for young workers

Anyone employed and above school leaving age must get paid at least the National Minimum Wage.

Discrimination

Age is a protected characteristic by law under the Equality Act 2010. This means it’s against the law to treat someone less favourably because of either:

  • their age
  • the age they appear to be

Find out more about age discrimination

Learner pre-enrolment and onboarding

    1. Learner(s) will be given some initial assessments to complete before the enrolment day, these tasks consist of…
    • Enrolment form & Commitment statement: They will need to complete the Enrolment form/Commitment statement. (Please check junk/ spam boxes)
    • Maths & English assessments via Skills Forward (identifies current knowledge),
    • Learning style questionnaire (identifies their style of learning)
    1. Employer section: Enrolment form and commitment statement: Once the learner completes their section of the enrolment form and commitment statement, it will automatically be emailed to the employer to complete their section.
    2. Official enrolment: Once tasks 1-3 have been completed, the training team will send an email to the learner with some enrolment dates to meet the tutor to complete a SkillScan*. Once the enrolment day has been confirmed, you will receive a confirmation email. The tutor will then confirm the times they will be meeting to complete the enrolment. The enrolment can take between 1 & 2 hours, but you can group staff to be seen together to speed up the overall process.
      • Skillscan: Like the RLRP task, except it is a verbal check, conducted by the tutor, to assess how competent you are against the apprenticeship syllabus.

    As an Ofsted regulated provider, we must confirm that we are giving (enough) new knowledge to your learners to justify the level of funding we are able to drawdown. Meaning, if they are too competent, then we won’t be able to run that particular programme for your employee and would have to look at an alternative.

    1. DAS authorisation: Finally, once we upload the learners’ details to your DAS account. Once we do, you automatically receive a government email from the apprenticeship service to authorise the funding for your staff member. However, your main POC will also contact you to remind you.
 

Learner journey & EPA (End Point Assessment)

The learner will meet the tutor officially once per month remotely to review, support and guide them on their apprenticeship work and make sure they are on top of their OJTH diary. Every apprenticeship usually begins by completing mandatory safeguarding and prevent modules, via ETF (Education & Training Foundation) online and Math’s and English upskilling (only for those that need it). The programme will then focus on the creating a portfolio of evidence, consisting of Knowledge, Skills & Behaviours via knowledge worksheets and work-based evidence – to see the requirements for your specific programme, please click here find your programme > select ‘SEE MORE’ to view the KSB required.

EPA: Completion and submission of your portfolio of evidence forms part of the learners EPA (End Point Assessment). At around 50 to 70% of the way through the apprenticeship, learners will be introduced to any additional EPA requirements. Most programme usually consist of around 3 to 4 separate assessment tasks. These assessments can vary from a professional discussion based on the competency skills evidenced in your portfolio, submission of a project accompanied by a presentation, to a multiple-choice exam and observation. These take after your apprenticeship programme has completed and can take place anywhere between 2 weeks and 3 months after, depending on several different factors i.e., tutor availability, exam windows and access to certain EPA criteria. This is all funded and coordinated via your training provider. To view your programmes EPA, click here > find your programme > select > ‘Roadmap’ to view the EPA requirements.

 

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