Jerome

My grandfather helped build the Millwall Extension back in the nineties. He'd come home with stories about laying track through South London, how the work was hard but honest, building something that would last. I grew up in New Cross hearing those stories, and after years moving boxes around warehouses, I knew I wanted to build something too. The new housing developments going up everywhere in Lewisham East looked like my chance. Electrical work paid well, and there was clearly demand. I just needed to get qualified.

I started at Lewisham Council in 2022. Their employment support team seemed helpful enough, directing me to the Construction Industry Training Board website where I found pages of electrical installation courses listed for London providers. It looked straightforward on paper. I called South Thames College first, optimistic. They told me their next Level 2 course had a six-month waiting list. Six months seemed manageable, so I put my name down and called Greenwich Community College as backup. Same story there, but the administrator mentioned something that stuck with me: "We've had reduced CITB funding this year, so we're running fewer courses."

That was the first time I heard the phrase that would follow me everywhere. Reduced funding. Not enough money. Budget constraints. It sounded reasonable at first. Everyone knows money is tight.

I tried a different approach, contacting local electrical contractors directly. Surely they needed people? Every site I passed had "Electricians Wanted" signs up. But they all said the same thing: they wanted someone already qualified. One foreman at a Catford development was blunt about it: "I can't afford to train you up, mate. Insurance won't cover unqualified workers, and I need someone who can start tomorrow." Fair enough, I thought. That's what the colleges were for.

So I went back to the system. My adviser at the Department for Work and Pensions explained that apprenticeship levy funds were restricted and most had been allocated to larger employers. "The budget has been cut," she said, looking genuinely sorry about it. "We just don't have the resources we used to." There it was again. No money. No resources. I accepted it because what choice did I have?

In early 2023, I heard through a mate that Tyrone from nearby Brixton had found work through a community training scheme. That gave me hope. I contacted Skillnet South London, ready to sign up for whatever they had. The woman on the phone was apologetic but clear: "Our electrical programme has been suspended indefinitely due to Treasury spending cuts. There is no funding."

I started to feel like I was chasing shadows. Every door led to the same answer: no money, cuts, budgets stretched too thin. It all sounded so inevitable, like the laws of physics. But something was nagging at me. If there was such high demand for electricians, and so many people like me wanted to train, why couldn't we make it work?

By late 2023, I decided to see for myself. I started visiting training centres in person instead of just calling. That's when I walked into the London South East College campus in Lewisham. I was asking about their electrical programme when the receptionist offered to show me around. We walked past three fully equipped electrical workshops that stood completely empty in the middle of the day. Brand-new testing equipment still in its packaging. Workbenches that looked like they'd never been used. Cable runs and junction boxes set up for practical training, gathering dust.

"You've got everything here," I said. "Why aren't you running courses?"

She nodded. "We have the facilities and qualified instructors. But CITB funding has been redirected to meet Treasury deficit targets rather than local housing delivery needs."

That's when something clicked. I was standing in a room full of everything needed to train electricians, in a borough where housing developments were going up on every corner, talking to someone who confirmed they had qualified instructors ready to teach. The people existed. The equipment existed. The demand existed. The buildings existed.

So what exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

I started paying attention differently after that. Walking through Lewisham East, I saw the same pattern everywhere. Empty training centres next to "Workers Needed" signs. People like me who wanted to learn next to employers who needed skilled workers. The Department for Work and Pensions saying there was no budget while new housing developments sat half-finished because they couldn't find qualified tradespeople.

The government that prints every pound note and mints every coin was telling me it couldn't find enough of them to connect willing workers to waiting employers. The same government that had just created billions of pounds to bail out banks during various financial crises suddenly discovered an empty vault when it came to training people to build homes.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that issues the currency told me it could not find enough of it to train people who were standing right there, ready to work. The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the materials were available. They were. All of them.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. It is the same logic as a household that says "we cannot afford it," except a household does not issue its own currency. The government does. The limit was never the money. The limit was the willingness to spend it into the places and the people who needed it.

I'm still here, still watching. I see the same pattern in every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. The electricians they said they couldn't afford to train are the same electricians they'll later say we desperately need when the housing targets aren't met. The money they said didn't exist for training will somehow appear when they need to import skilled workers from abroad or pay overtime rates to the few qualified people left.

The block was never financial. It was always political. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.