Jamie

I've been swinging a hammer since I was 16. My uncle Dave ran a small groundwork firm, and I spent five years learning everything he could teach me: laying foundations, drainage, basic brickwork. I loved the craft of it, the satisfaction of seeing a job done right. When his business folded in 2016, I thought I'd just find another firm to take me on. But everyone wanted certificates I didn't have. Paper to prove what my hands already knew.

By 2022, I was determined to get those qualifications. I wanted to start my own company, do the kind of careful work my uncle had taught me. Our council house needed proper insulation and rewiring, work I could do myself if I had the right certifications. My partner supported the plan even though it meant tighter budgets while I studied.

I applied to Wigan and Leigh College for their Level 2 Construction Skills course. Three weeks later, I got a phone call: "The programme has been suspended due to insufficient CITB funding allocation for this region." The woman on the phone was apologetic but firm. "There is no funding," she said. It sounded reasonable. Everyone accepts that sometimes there's no money.

I called the Construction Industry Training Board directly. They told me they couldn't fund individual applications and gave me a list of approved training providers. I worked through them methodically. First was a company in Manchester. "We'd love to help," the coordinator said, "but we don't have government contracts for your postcode area." Second was a firm in Stockport. Same story. Third was a training centre in Salford. "The budget has been cut," the manager explained. "We cannot afford to run that programme."

Each conversation followed the same pattern. People who seemed genuine, even frustrated, explaining they couldn't help because the money wasn't there. I started to feel like I was chasing something that didn't exist.

Then Bolton College called me back. They had a part-time NVQ programme starting in September, funded through a different route. I felt like I'd won something. For two months, I travelled to Bolton twice a week, learning the theory behind work I'd been doing for years. The instructors were good, the other students were keen. I was finally getting somewhere.

In November, they cancelled the course. "Reduced levy funding from central government," the administrator told me over the phone. "We cannot afford to run that programme." Twenty students, halfway through qualifications they needed for work that was crying out to be done. The same excuse again.

The following week, I drove past the college workshop on my way to a cash-in-hand job in Horwich. The building was locked, but I could see through the windows. Brand new equipment sitting unused: cutting tools still in their plastic, workbenches that looked like they'd never been touched. A security guard was doing his rounds.

"Shame, isn't it?" he said when I asked what was happening. "All that kit just sitting there. Building's temporarily closed pending budget review, they told me. Been three months now."

That was when something clicked. If there was no money for training, why was there money for equipment that nobody was using? If the people existed – and I'd met them, twenty of us ready to learn – and the building existed, and the tools existed, what exactly was it that "there is no money" for?

I started calling smaller firms directly, offering to work for reduced wages in exchange for proper mentoring. Most said they couldn't take on informal apprentices without insurance cover they couldn't afford. But one foreman was honest with me: "Mate, I've got three lads in the same boat as you. All good workers, all need the same certificates. If someone would just run the bloody courses, we'd have them qualified in six months. But every training provider we call says the same thing: no funding."

I applied for Universal Credit, thinking I'd retrain in something else. The advisor looked at my background and said construction was a "skills shortage area" so I should stick with it. When I asked where the training places actually were, she couldn't tell me. She gave me the same list of providers I'd already called.

I've been thinking about this differently ever since that day at Bolton College. The government that issues the pound told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. But the building was there. The equipment was there. The instructors had been there until they got laid off. The only thing missing was the decision to connect them all together.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The same government that found billions for bank bailouts told me it couldn't afford to finish training twenty construction workers. 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.

I still want to start that company. I still drive past building sites and see work that needs doing properly. But I understand now that what happened to me isn't bad luck. It's the same logic playing out in every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. And it's happening to people across the country who are ready to work, ready to learn, ready to build the homes and infrastructure we all need. The government issues the currency. It chose not to spend it where it was needed most.