Nor a drop to drink…still

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Hurrah and Huzzah. The Government is throwing £725m at the apprenticeship system to reset it and make it more fit for purpose.

For construction, this is vital. We are never going to get anywhere near the 1.5million homes by mid-2030 without a major push to expand the sector. Actually, I could have stopped that sentence after the 2030 and it would still be true.

The reform package includes changes to levies, fresh support for SMEs and shorter, more flexible training routes. That SME support will include fully funded apprenticeships for eligible under-25s , and the removal of the 5% co-investment required. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer underlined the intention behind the reform, saying it was: “time to change the way apprenticeships are viewed and to put them on an equal footing with university.”

Changes to the Apprenticeship Levy are, if done right, welcome. It’s been too complex, too onerous for employers. I’m not sure that shortening the courses is the right way to go for every sector. I’d like to think that if someone is working on my house, you know, actually building something, that they’ve had a solid amount of training.

That said, the building materials sector has been doing sterling work in the past few years to expand the number of apprenticeships offered, across the whole gamut of career possibilities, not the least the initiatives by NMBS and the BMF. Credit where it is due.

However, offering apprenticeships, getting apprentices in, is only really going to add to the long-term growth of the sector if there are the jobs for them to do at the end of their programme. It doesn’t matter whether the government is going to fund the whole shebang or not, if there are no long-term, permanent roles for them to graduate into then it’s just a plaster on a broken leg.

In other news, and forgive me for the parochial nature, but here’s a very real example of the long-term unintended consequences of government action. EU water standards are high. Very high. When the Thatcher government decided to privatise the UK’s water industry, it did so because it knew how much investment would be require to bring the nation’s Victorian sewer and water supply system up to date. So, it wrote off all the debt of the various water utility companies, so that investors were buying into a clean slate. Who knew that, over the years, shareholders would take the dividends, saddle the companies with yet more debt, and take more money out, whilst investing less than the required amount in the infrastructure? Everyone, that’s who.

It means that 12 days after the water in one of the dozen or so major historical spa towns in England was turned-off, residents are still having to boil their water before drinking it, washing up with it, or cleaning their teeth with it. We can shower in it, but have to make sure that we keep our mouths shut. Or, trek over to one of the water supply stations to fill-up canisters and bottles, or collect packs of bottled water. I know this is, to be fair, a First World Problem, that there are a great many areas across the world where boiling drinking water is standard. It’s still a right old pain in the whatsit, and, more worryingly, has cost hospitality businesses across the town a small fortune in lost revenue. Hospitality businesses that are barely scraping by as it is, thanks to a gazillion problems, including those imposed by the last two Budgets, are on their knees.

We’re still not entirely sure what exactly the problem was. First it was a bad batch of chemicals that meant to pumps had to be switched off. Then a second bad batch apparently, leading to the decision to switch on the supply of possibly contaminated water, to allow a whole town to flush its loos. Still don’t know what the contamination might be, I suspect e-Coli. Yuk.

In the meantime, the CEO of South East Water, who’s been conspicuous by his absence, has been spotted at the Pembury treatment works….