Dismissal letter at end of apprenticeship

If you decide to go ahead with dismissing an apprentice at the end of their apprenticeship after you’ve held a meeting with them to discuss your dismissal proposal, use our letter to effect it.

Dismissal in writing

Assuming you’ve first held a meeting with the apprentice to discuss your proposal to dismiss them at the end of their apprenticeship (see our Notice of Potential Dismissal at End of Apprenticeship letter), and assuming also that you’ve followed a fair procedure and haven’t been able to secure a permanent role or other available alternative employment for them, if you then do decide to terminate their employment, you’ll need to notify them in writing of your decision. Our Dismissal Letter at End of Apprenticeship will ensure you effect the dismissal decision properly. Our letter confirms the decision to terminate the apprentice’s employment, advises them that your potentially fair reason for dismissal is “some other substantial reason” (SOSR) and why that reason applies, provides that you’ve considered, but been unable to find, alternative employment for them, and then sets out their entitlements on dismissal, e.g. outstanding wages and accrued holiday pay.

Notice

Check the notice provisions in the apprentice’s apprenticeship agreement and ensure you start the dismissal process early enough to include the greater of the contractual notice period or the statutory minimum notice period before its fixed term ends, so that the apprentice works out their notice period to coincide with the apprenticeship end date. Otherwise, if you don’t, you’ll need to pay the apprentice wholly or partly in lieu of notice.

Appeal

An apprentice has no statutory right to appeal against an SOSR dismissal. However, you should ideally still give them an opportunity to appeal as part of an overall fair dismissal procedure. Therefore, we’ve included this in our letter and given them five working days to do so. If they do appeal, arrange an appeal meeting to hear their appeal – you can use our Notice of SOSR or Statutory Bar Appeal Meeting and our Letter Following SOSR or Statutory Bar Appeal Meeting for this.