Tomás's Story

Meet Tomás, a 24-year-old from Islington South and Finsbury who wanted to train as a construction worker to help build the homes London desperately needs. Despite training places sitting empty and housing targets unmet, HM Treasury's approach to infrastructure spending blocked his path. While construction training providers had capacity and the local authority had ambitious housing plans, central government treated building investment as a deficit risk rather than the mechanism to put skilled workers like Tomás into jobs creating essential infrastructure. The workers were ready, the training capacity existed, but Westminster's funding choices created an artificial constraint where none needed to exist. DISCLOSURE: This episode contains discussion of government fiscal policy and infrastructure investment approaches.