SYSTEMS / STRUCTURES / EMPLOYMENT
UNSENT / WORK
Published
The Price of Being Allowed to Work
Before you earn anything, Britain increasingly expects you to pay for permission to apply.
There was a time when an employer took somebody on, decided what training they needed and paid to develop them.
If the work involved mobile access equipment, the employer arranged the IPAF course. If workers needed to enter confined spaces, the company provided confined-spaces training. If somebody was moving into supervision or management, the business invested in SSSTS or SMSTS.
The training related to the job.
Today, the order is increasingly reversed.
Before an employer gives you the job, it wants evidence that somebody else has already trained you for it. Before an agency submits you to a client, it wants copies of your cards. Before you earn a single pound, you may be expected to spend hundreds or thousands proving that you are ready to work.
And even after paying for everything, there is no guarantee that any work exists.
THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
The Shopping List
To work on a construction site, you will ordinarily need the correct CSCS or affiliated card for your occupation. That generally means holding the relevant qualification and passing the appropriate health-and-safety test.
That is only the beginning.
An employer might ask for IPAF if powered access equipment is involved. PASMA may be wanted for mobile access towers. Confined-spaces training may be expected for restricted environments. Work near telecommunications equipment may require RF or EMF awareness.
If you want to supervise, somebody may ask for SSSTS. If you want to manage a site, they may want SMSTS alongside the appropriate CSCS card and previous management experience.
Move into another environment and another layer appears.
DBS checks where applicable, healthcare-estates experience, infection-control procedures, permits to work and specialist technical standards.
Gold Card, IPAF, DBS clearance, testing qualifications, high-voltage awareness and previous data-centre experience.
Personal Track Safety, medical screening, inductions and railway-specific competence.
NRSWA street works, SA001, SA002 and task-specific Openreach PIA accreditations.
None of these environments is identical. Not every worker needs every ticket. Many requirements exist for serious and legitimate safety reasons.
But look at what has happened collectively.
The worker is increasingly expected to arrive already trained for every possible site, every possible risk and every possible client.
THE MOVING MINIMUM
I Have the Tickets
I know this because I have paid for many of them.
I have CSCS. I have SMSTS. I have IPAF. I have PASMA. I have confined-spaces training. I have RF awareness. I also have professional asbestos qualifications and wider health-and-safety experience.
These qualifications are not useless. I understand why safe systems of work matter. I have worked in environments where inadequate training can expose workers and members of the public to serious harm.
But possessing the certificates has shown me something else.
Every time you obtain another qualification, the industry produces another requirement.
Yesterday, IPAF made you more useful. Today, the advertisement says IPAF is required.
Yesterday, SMSTS demonstrated management capability. Today, it is treated as the admission ticket for being considered for a site-management role.
Yesterday, an employer trained its workers for a particular environment. Today, the vacancy asks whether you already possess the client-specific accreditation before anybody has even spoken to you.
The worker keeps paying, but the finishing line keeps moving.
THE SIEVE
From Training to Filtering
This helps explain why recruiters and agencies are so eager to collect CVs.
The CV is no longer simply a description of what you have done. It is an inventory.
Which cards do you hold?
When do they expire?
Do you have IPAF 3a and 3b?
Do you hold PASMA?
Confined spaces?
SSSTS or SMSTS?
PTS, NRSWA or PIA?
How many years on this exact site?
When an agency has fifty applicants, the person with the largest collection of current certificates can be moved to the top. The employer gets a worker who requires less training, less investment and less time before becoming productive.
Everybody else is sieved out.
That creates a qualification arms race. One applicant pays for CSCS. Another arrives with CSCS and IPAF. The next has CSCS, IPAF, PASMA and confined spaces. Someone else has all of those plus SMSTS, first aid and specialist industry accreditation.
Soon, possessing only the qualification genuinely necessary for the occupation no longer feels sufficient.
Workers buy extra courses because they are frightened that somebody with one more card will be selected ahead of them.
Training stops being solely about learning. It becomes part of the competition for visibility.
THE OPTIONAL REQUIREMENT
“Desirable” Does Not Always Feel Optional
Job advertisements often divide requirements into “essential” and “desirable.” On paper, that appears reasonable.
In practice, if enough applicants possess the desirable qualification, it becomes essential without the employer having to call it essential.
If ten people apply and seven already have IPAF, why would the employer pay to train one of the remaining three?
If several prospective site managers already hold SMSTS, why take somebody with the experience and potential but without the certificate?
If another applicant has already paid for confined-spaces training, why employ somebody who would require a course before entering the work area?
YOU CAN APPLY WITHOUT IT.
BUT SOMEBODY ELSE PROBABLY HAS IT.
That pressure keeps the training market moving. People pay for more courses, more renewals and more cards because they cannot know which combination will unlock the next job.
THE DISTINCTION
Safety Training Is Not the Problem
The answer is not to remove safety standards.
Construction, utilities, telecommunications, hospitals, railways and industrial sites contain genuine hazards. Workers must be competent. Equipment must be operated safely. Confined spaces can kill. Working at height can kill. Electricity can kill. Asbestos exposure can cause fatal disease decades later.
The problem is not that training exists.
The problem is the transfer of responsibility.
Employers have duties to provide appropriate information, instruction, training and supervision for the work their employees undertake. But the modern labour market increasingly encourages companies to avoid much of the development process by selecting people who have already financed everything themselves.
The worker carries the cost, spends the time, loses the earning days and accepts the possibility that the qualification may expire before producing any work.
The certificate is real. The job may not be.
THE SUPPOSED WAY IN
What About an Apprenticeship?
An apprenticeship is supposed to solve this problem.
The employer gives a young person a job, pays them while they learn, provides the necessary training and helps them accumulate experience. Instead of demanding that an 18-year-old arrive fully prepared, the employer develops them.
But apprenticeships are jobs. They are not courses sitting on a shelf waiting for a young person to select one. An employer must create the position, choose an applicant and remain willing to train them.
And the system has moved away from its traditional role as a bridge from school into work.
under 19
aged 25+
In England during August 2025 to April 2026, total apprenticeship starts increased, but under-19 starts fell by 5.4%. Under-19s represented only 20.6% of starts, while people aged 25 and over represented 52.4%.
Older workers deserve training too. I am retraining at 43. The problem is not their inclusion.
The problem is substitution. Apprenticeship funding can develop an established employee instead of creating a first entrance for somebody who has never had a job. The headline number rises while the doorway for young people narrows.
Some young apprentices receive excellent structured training. Others become cheap labour performing a narrow range of tasks. Some complete their programme and still meet advertisements demanding further tickets and years of experience. Others never complete at all.
If employers do not create enough genuine entry-level apprenticeships, telling young people to “learn a trade” is not advice. It is a slogan.
HOW WE ARRIVED HERE
This Did Not Happen Overnight
The change is older than austerity, but successive shocks and policy choices deepened it.
The Retreat Begins
Employer-funded training and public investment in adult skills were already weakening. The responsibility for remaining employable began moving towards individuals.
Recession Accelerates It
Economic uncertainty made recruitment and long-term training easier to cut. Employers became more cautious and increasingly favoured workers who could be productive immediately.
Austerity Normalises It
Cuts to adult education, public bodies and local capacity reinforced a low-investment labour market. Subcontracting moved more cost and risk down the chain.
The Levy Changes the Mix
The apprenticeship levy expanded employer-funded programmes but also enabled apprenticeship money to support older and existing workers. Higher-level training grew while youth entry routes contracted.
The retreat began before austerity. The recession accelerated it. Austerity normalised it. The levy widened employer-funded programmes and could support training for existing employees; over the same period, youth entry routes contracted. The funding model does not guarantee that employers will create new first-job opportunities.
In England, the system changed again on 1 August 2026. The Growth and Skills Levy can fund apprenticeship units and foundation apprenticeships as well as full apprenticeships. That broadens what funding can support, but it does not by itself show whether enough genuine entry-level jobs and training places are being created.
The Learning and Work Institute calculates that employers’ real-terms training investment per employee was £1,700 in 2024, 36% below the £2,634 recorded in 2005.
Britain reports skills shortages while searching for fully trained workers it did not have to train.
THE RENEWAL CYCLE
The Expiry-Date Economy
Many qualifications and cards do not last forever. They expire. They require renewal. Workers must repeat assessments, refresh their knowledge and pay another fee.
Refresher training can have a legitimate purpose. Regulations change. Equipment changes. People forget things. Safety competence must remain current.
But expiry creates another pressure when employment is insecure.
A worker can pay for a ticket because vacancies request it, fail to obtain the work and then watch the certificate move steadily towards its renewal date.
The person is not renewing a qualification because an employer needs them for an existing job. They are renewing it to remain eligible to apply for a job that might never arrive.
The worker is effectively paying a subscription to remain visible to the labour market.
THE BARGAIN
Qualified for the Possibility
This is what Britain increasingly calls employability.
It is no longer enough to be capable of learning the job. You must have learned it already.
It is no longer enough to possess the central occupational qualification. You must anticipate every environment in which an employer might place you.
It is no longer enough to demonstrate experience. You must translate that experience into the correct collection of cards, certificates and acronyms.
And it is no longer enough to be ready to work.
You must spend money proving that readiness before an employer decides whether it has any work for you.
That is why this is not merely a conversation about training. It is about power.