Tomás

I came to London when I was eight, when my parents decided Portugal wasn't giving our family the future we deserved. We settled in Finsbury Park, and I grew up watching the city change around me. By sixteen, I was working to help keep us afloat – warehouses, shops, whatever paid. But I always had this thing with my hands. I could fix anything that broke in our flat. When the washing machine packed up, I figured out the problem before the repair man arrived. My dad used to joke that I had electricity in my fingers.

By 2023, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to learn electrical installation properly, get my qualifications, maybe start my own contracting business one day. London's always building something, and I wanted to be part of it. Not just shifting boxes in a warehouse until my back gave out.

I started with the Construction Industry Training Board in early 2023. They run the apprenticeship schemes that everyone talks about. I filled in their forms, waited for the call. When it came, the woman on the phone was polite but firm. "Places are full for this intake. Try again next year." I asked if there was a waiting list, anything I could do. "Just reapply next year. That's the process."

Next stop was Islington Council's employment centre on Upper Street. The advisor there seemed genuinely sorry. "We used to run training courses," she told me. "The budget has been cut. Central government reduced the allocation and we had to choose what to keep running." I asked what happened to the people who needed training. "They have to find private providers now. Here's a list."

City and Islington College was next. I walked down to their Finsbury Park campus, found the admissions office. The electrical installation course existed, but the waiting list was over 200 people long. "We just don't have the capacity," the administrator explained. "The funding doesn't stretch to the number of people who want to do this."

I tried three private training providers across North London. Each conversation followed the same script. Yes, they ran electrical courses. No, they couldn't take me on without Construction Industry Training Board funding approval. "The levy funding has to come through CITB," one told me. "We can't just charge you directly and expect the qualification to be recognised."

Finally, I got through to a CITB regional office. This time, the explanation was more detailed. "Funding allocations have been reduced this year," the man said. "Priority is being given to areas with lower economic activity. London is seen as having sufficient training provision already."

I asked him what that meant for someone like me, standing here with my hands empty, wanting to work. "Try again next year. The allocations might be different."

Six months later, I was walking past City and Islington College on my way to another warehouse shift. The electrical workshop faces the street, big windows so you can see inside. It was completely empty. Not just quiet – empty. Cables and equipment sitting unused, workbenches clear, not a person in sight.

I recognised one of the tutors from my initial visit, having a cigarette outside. I asked him why the workshop was dark during what should have been class time. He shook his head. "We've got capacity for thirty more students in there. The equipment, the space, the staff hours. But we can't fill the places."

I didn't understand. "Why not?"

"The funding formula doesn't account for London's housing targets," he said. "They allocate training places based on historical patterns, not on what we actually need to build. We're supposed to train electricians to wire the homes that have planning permission, but the money gets spread thin across the whole country instead of going where the building's happening."

That was when I started to see it differently. I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. But I could see the workshop sitting empty. I could count the 200 people on the waiting list. I could walk past construction sites across Islington where they needed electricians.

The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the equipment was available. They were. All of them. I was looking at them through the workshop window.

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, still working warehouse shifts while those workshops sit empty. But I understand now that this is not just my story. It is the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. The construction sites need electricians. The electricians need training. The training centres have empty benches. Somewhere between all of these facts, someone decided that connecting them was impossible. That decision had nothing to do with money and everything to do with the choice not to spend it.