HMRC Employment Status Check

We’re introducing a new HMRC employment verification check to help improve the accuracy of the information we hold and strengthen the assurance behind the funds we administer.

These statuses will only show for newly approved learners with a start date after 15 April 2026.

Why we’re doing this

We’re making better use of shared government data to:

• confirm employment details more effectively
• improve the quality of our services over time
• identify opportunities to simplify processes for users in the future

What this check means for you

These checks do not:

•  affect payments for training
• replace your responsibility to keep evidence of employment, as required in the funding rules

They are an additional tool to help us verify information more accurately.

In the Manage your apprentices’ section of your training provider account you will see a new column “Employment status”.

Following our monthly HMRC employment check you will now see the employment status we have recorded for your learner.

HMRC employment status checks will be carried out on new starts that have been approved 24 hours before the 14 of each month.

The employment status will be updated on learner records on the following day.

Employment statuses

The provider account will show one of the following statuses:

Employed
The HMRC validation check was successful and confirms funding eligibility.

Not employed
We have found a valid NINO but it is not linked to a PAYE scheme.

Not verified – PAYE scheme missing
 The PAYE matched to the apprenticeship service record may be incorrect. This is usually because the scheme the employer has added to their apprenticeship service account is not the one used with HMRC for this learner.

Not verified – NINO invalid
The National Insurance number entered in the training provider’s ILR (individual learner record) may be invalid. This could be because there is an issue with the format, or the employer provided a different reference, for example payroll ID or a temporary National Insurance number, which are no longer used by HMRC. Please check with the training provider that the correct National Insurance number has been entered into their ILR.

Not verified – PAYE scheme missing and NINO invalid
Both the PAYE and NINO may require updates.

If you see a blank status this means either:

• the learner was added before employment status checks were introduced, so no check has been carried out, or
• the check is still pending

You are not required to take any action, but we would encourage you to use the new information to improve the pass rate of your HRMC checks to confirm funding eligibility.

Last updated on 07 April 2026 11:45