The Adult Skills Fund (ASF) is the current name for what used to be the Adult Education Budget (AEB) — roughly £1.4 billion a year (gov.uk, 2026) that funds skills, employability and wellbeing courses for over a million adults across England. The change that matters most for providers is not the new name but devolution: most of the ASF is now devolved to mayoral combined and strategic authorities (with adult-skills funding also delegated to the Greater London Authority), each of which sets its own adult-education priorities for residents in its area. A smaller, non-devolved "national" ASF, funded centrally, covers adults living outside those areas. For colleges and training providers, that reshapes workforce planning: you increasingly staff delivery to local commissioning rather than to one national rulebook. Here's what devolution actually changes, and what it means for the roles you'll need to fill.
Funding figures are indicative and dated: the ASF is worth roughly £1.4 billion a year as of 2026 (gov.uk). The list of devolved authorities changes as devolution expands, so check the current ASF devolution arrangements at gov.uk before planning to a specific area.
What is the Adult Skills Fund, and what happened to the Adult Education Budget?
The Adult Skills Fund is the renamed Adult Education Budget — same broad purpose, new label. It pays for adult (19+) skills provision: from English, maths and digital courses through to sector-specific training that helps people into work or on in a career. Across England it supports well over a million adults a year, and it remains one of the largest single funding streams a college or independent training provider will hold.
One thing to get right in any tender or board paper: the funding rules are no longer published by "the ESFA." The Education and Skills Funding Agency closed and was absorbed into the Department for Education in April 2025, and since the September 2025 machinery-of-government change the adult-skills funding rules sit under the government's skills function, now held within the Department for Work and Pensions. If your documentation still attributes ASF rules to the ESFA, it's dated — a small thing, but the sort of detail commissioners and auditors notice.
How does devolution change the Adult Skills Fund?
Devolution splits the ASF into two worlds that a provider often works across at the same time. In devolved areas, a mayoral combined or strategic authority receives an un-ringfenced ASF grant and decides how to spend it against its own local skills priorities — which sectors to prioritise, which courses to commission, and often how contracts are procured or grant-funded. Outside those areas, a non-devolved "national" ASF is funded centrally and follows national rules; it also covers certain continuing learners transitioning at devolution boundaries.
The practical upshot is that the same qualification, delivered to two learners a few miles apart, can sit under different commissioning priorities, different reporting expectations and different local eligibility emphases depending on where each learner lives. Devolved authorities' ASF also tends to bundle related funding — core adult skills, Free Courses for Jobs, and Skills Bootcamps — so a devolved contract can span several strands rather than one. The table below sets out the main differences that bear on delivery.
| What differs | National (non-devolved) ASF | Devolved ASF |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the funding | Central government (skills brief now in DWP) | The mayoral / strategic authority for the area |
| Who sets priorities | National funding rules | The authority's own local skills priorities |
| Who it covers | Adults outside devolved areas | Adults resident in the authority's area |
| What it can bundle | Core adult skills provision | Core ASF plus Free Courses for Jobs, Skills Bootcamps |
| What it means for you | Plan to one national rulebook | Staff to each area's commissioned priorities |
If a new devolved contract means standing up provision in a priority sector you don't currently staff for, the time to line up tutors and assessors is before the delivery year starts — not after enrolment opens.
What does devolution mean for how providers staff delivery?
This is the part that rarely makes the funding guidance: devolution turns workforce planning into a local exercise. When priorities differ by mayoral area, so does the shape of the delivery team you need. A provider operating across two or three authorities may be scaling up construction and health provision in one area to match its commissioned priorities, while another area is weighting digital or green skills — and the tutor, assessor and skills-coach mix has to follow the money.
That has three knock-on effects we see across the providers we work with. First, demand concentrates on subject specialists in whichever sectors a given authority has chosen to prioritise, which can move quickly year to year. Second, because devolved and national funding carry different rules and reporting, the back-office roles that keep provision compliant — funding, data and quality — become harder to staff and more valuable. Third, providers that bid across several authorities need a workforce that can flex as contracts are won or lost, rather than a fixed establishment built around a single national contract. It's a variation on the wider recruitment challenges across FE, HE and apprenticeships, sharpened by the fact that the goalposts now sit in different places in different regions.
It also sits alongside the other funding-led shifts reshaping delivery teams — most notably what the Growth and Skills Levy means for how providers staff apprenticeship delivery. A provider running both levy-funded apprenticeships and devolved ASF provision is planning its workforce against two moving funding pictures at once.
Which roles are in demand under a devolved Adult Skills Fund?
The roles that come up most often in devolved delivery fall into two groups: the people who teach and assess, and the people who make sure the funding stands up to scrutiny. Both matter, and providers tend to underestimate the second until an audit or a new authority's rules expose the gap.
- Subject tutors, assessors and skills coaches in the sectors a local authority has prioritised — the front line of any commissioned provision, and the roles that move fastest when priorities shift.
- Curriculum and quality managers who can shape provision to a specific authority's priorities and evidence outcomes against them.
- Funding, compliance and audit officers who can work across national and devolved rules without tripping over the differences.
- MIS and data roles — the people who make sure enrolments, eligibility and claims are recorded correctly for each funding stream and each commissioner.
- Bid, contracts and partnership roles to win and manage devolved contracts in the first place.
Understanding which sectors an authority is prioritising, and why, increasingly overlaps with the wider picture of local skills needs that bodies such as Skills England now help shape. For a provider, reading those signals early is the difference between recruiting ahead of a contract and scrambling after it.
If you're a tutor, assessor or skills coach in a sector a mayoral authority has prioritised, demand for your experience is rising in those areas right now.
How does bidding for devolved contracts reshape workforce planning?
Devolution doesn't just change who funds provision — it changes the rhythm of hiring. Devolved ASF is often commissioned through procurement or grant cycles that run on the authority's timetable, not a single national one. A provider bidding across several areas is effectively running several workforce plans in parallel, each contingent on an award it may or may not win.
That uncertainty is why permanent-versus-interim thinking has become part of delivery planning rather than an afterthought. When a contract lands, provision often has to start quickly; when a bid is lost, an over-built permanent team becomes a cost. The providers managing this well hold a stable permanent core for their recurring provision, and use interim or fixed-term capacity to ramp delivery when a new devolved contract starts or to cover a mobilisation period. Getting that balance right — enough permanence for quality, enough flexibility to bid without over-committing — is one of the quieter workforce decisions devolution has forced onto providers.
How Aptitude can help
We recruit only in the Skills, Employability and Education sectors, so we understand what a devolved ASF contract actually asks of a delivery team — the subject specialists, the assessors, and the funding, compliance and data people who keep the provision fundable. Because we work across the sector, we can talk to you about how providers in your region are staffing devolved provision and where the shortages are biting, rather than a generic national picture. Whether you're planning for a contract you've just won or building the flexibility to bid for the next one, our advice for employers and the sectors we cover are a good place to start — and we can help you find the people to deliver it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Adult Skills Fund? The Adult Skills Fund (ASF) is the government funding stream for adult (19+) skills, employability and wellbeing provision in England, worth roughly £1.4 billion a year (gov.uk, 2026). It is the renamed Adult Education Budget, and it supports over a million adults a year through colleges and independent training providers.
Is the Adult Education Budget still called that? No. The Adult Education Budget (AEB) was renamed the Adult Skills Fund (ASF). It's the same broad funding for adult skills provision under a new label, so where older documents say "AEB," the current term is "ASF."
What does devolution of the Adult Skills Fund mean for providers? Most of the ASF is now devolved to mayoral combined and strategic authorities (and delegated to the Greater London Authority), which set their own local adult-skills priorities. A non-devolved "national" ASF covers adults outside those areas. For providers it means planning and staffing delivery to each area's commissioned priorities rather than to a single national rulebook.
Which staff roles are most affected by ASF devolution? Two groups: subject tutors, assessors and skills coaches in whichever sectors a local authority has prioritised; and the funding, compliance, MIS and quality roles that keep provision fundable across different national and devolved rules. Bid and contracts roles also matter, because devolved provision is often won through local procurement.
Who sets the Adult Skills Fund rules now — is it the ESFA? Not the ESFA. It closed and was absorbed into the Department for Education in April 2025, and since September 2025 the adult-skills funding rules sit under the government's skills function, now held within the Department for Work and Pensions. In devolved areas, the relevant mayoral or strategic authority sets its own priorities within that framework.
