Marisa's Story

Marisa, 31, from Dulwich and West Norwood in London, wanted to train as a nurse but found herself blocked by Westminster's workforce planning failures. Despite demand for healthcare workers across London's NHS trusts, Health Education England's training budgets were constrained by Treasury spending limits that treat public investment as a cost to be minimised. The training places existed. People like Marisa wanted to fill them. But HM Treasury made the political choice to cap budgets as though the government that issues the pound could run out of pounds. This episode explores how central government decisions about NHS workforce funding create artificial scarcity in healthcare training, leaving both patients and potential healthcare workers behind. Disclosure: Blocked Britain challenges mainstream economic assumptions about government spending constraints.