🇬🇧 Rebuilding Britain’s Future: How We Navigate Workforce Challenges & Grow the Economy in 2025 and Beyond
Written by Aquayemi-Claude Akinsanya | TCSL2022 x Styledbyclaude
Published: August 6, 2025
📻 Live on LBC UK The Wake-Up Call Britain Needs
Earlier this morning, I was invited as a live guest on LBC UK with Richard Spurr, where I joined a powerful conversation about a question now echoing across every region, every industry, and every community:
“How do we fix Britain’s broken economy and make this country attractive again for people to work, live, and thrive?”
It was more than just a radio interview.
It was a civic intervention and a deeply personal one.
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As a social justice campaigner, public speaker, and founder of The Claudes SEN Law Campaign, I’ve spent years listening to marginalised communities, building inclusive policy proposals and working from the ground up to change the systems that continue to fail us.
⚠️ The Truth About Britain’s Workforce Crisis in 2025
Before we talk solutions, we must first face the facts and face them without spin.
🛑 The numbers don’t lie:
- The UK is experiencing over 1 million unfilled job vacancies (ONS, July 2025).
- In the NHS alone, we face a shortage of 120,000 staff, from nurses to porters to GPs (BMA Workforce Review).
- Teacher recruitment is in free fall, down 30% from targets this year (DfE, June 2025).
- Key sectors including logistics, construction, and care are desperately short of hands.
Why?
Because the real cost of living is incompatible with the real value of labour.
Because people are working, but not thriving.
And because government rhetoric has replaced real strategy.
🧠 Expert Insight: It’s About People, Not Just Numbers
In my live LBC interview, I shared this simple truth:
“You can’t grow an economy if people are burning out, priced out, or locked out of opportunity. To grow Britain’s economy, we must grow Britain’s people.”
This isn’t just about GDP or immigration policy.
This is about restoring the social contract between workers and the state, between citizens and leadership, between the present and the future.
🔎 The Five Challenges Holding Us Back
- 💼 Labour Shortages & Poor Workforce Conditions
Our public services are running on exhaustion. Care workers are leaving faster than they’re trained. And the private sector isn’t catching up. - 💷 Wages That Don’t Meet Reality
Real-terms wages are 2.6% lower than pre-pandemic levels (Resolution Foundation, July 2025). Even two full-time jobs can’t keep some households afloat. - 🧳 Inflexible Immigration Policy
Britain’s workforce has historically relied on international talent especially in care, hospitality, and seasonal agriculture. But after new visa caps, net migration has dropped by over 100,000 (Home Office, 2025), leading to a skill vacuum. - 🏠 Housing & Cost of Living Crisis
Rents are up 28% in two years (Zoopla Index, July 2025). 1 in 3 key workers can’t afford to live near their workplace (Shelter UK). We are pushing essential workers out of the cities and communities they keep alive. - 🧠 Youth Disengagement & Mental Health
More than 35% of young people (18–30) are now actively considering leaving the UK due to lack of opportunity and poor mental health outcomes (YouGov, June 2025). This is a national emergency not just a “Gen Z trend.” - 🌍 Rebuilding the Future: My 5-Point Solution Framework
As someone who works at the intersection of justice, leadership, and inclusive development, here’s what I laid out in the interview and what I believe Britain needs to implement with urgency: - 📜 National Workforce Renewal Act
Invest in people, not just markets.
- Raise wages in care, health, and teaching in line with inflation.
- Fund upskilling, apprenticeships, and in-work training for under-30s.
- Introduce a “Retention Bonus Scheme” for public sector professionals.
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Stopping Rosebank or any new oil and gas license is not just an environmental necessity; it’s a legal and moral imperative. It aligns with global climate science, reflects evolving legal standards, and signals a genuine commitment to a just transition. And, importantly, it sets a powerful precedent for future decisions. 🗣 Aquayemi-Claude G. Akinsanya
🌍 Smart, Ethical Migration System
We don’t have a migrant problem. We have a mismanagement problem.
- Reform the Shortage Occupation List based on real-time sector data.
- Introduce a Mid-Skills Visa Pathway with fast-track residency for NHS and green job roles.
- Recognise overseas qualifications within 6 weeks.
🔋 Green & Digital Jobs for the Next Generation
Climate action is economic action.
- Launch a National Retrofit Corps and Green Tech Bootcamps.
- Fund youth-led innovation projects in sustainability and social enterprise.
- Support neurodivergent and disabled entrepreneurs in emerging sectors.
🏘️ Affordable, Secure Housing for Workers
No one should be priced out of service to their community.
- Build 50,000 key worker homes by 2030 using public land.
- Introduce rent caps in high-pressure zones.
- Expand co-housing and rent-to-own schemes for young professionals.
♿ Equity, Access, and Dignity at Work
Inclusion is not charity it’s strategy.
- Enforce mandatory pay gap reporting for ethnicity and disability.
- Expand Access to Work funding for disabled and neurodivergent employees.
- Incentivise inclusive workplace certifications.
✊🏿 A Personal Reflection
Why This Fight is Personal
I speak not just from research and policy but from lived experience.
From growing up in communities underserved by the system.
From navigating neurodivergence and barriers as a student, a speaker, and an advocate.
From witnessing the eviction of families, the exclusion of disabled children, and the burnout of carers.
My work through campaigns know by my content creator name: TCSL2022 x StyledbyClaude ©️ has always been about intersectionality, inclusion, with dynamic impact and visibility.
📢 Final Word: We Must Remind the Crisis
Britain doesn’t just need to recover.
It needs to remember.
To remember the people holding this country together the nurses, the cleaners, the teachers, the entrepreneurs, the carers, the campaigners.
“To remind the crisis is to honour the truth. And to act boldly, justly, and with care to reshape it.”
The next generation isn’t asking for favours. We’re demanding fairness.
This is our moment. Let’s not waste it.
With strength,
~ Aquayemi-Claude Garnett Akinsanya
TCSL2022 x StyledbyClaude
Speaker | Advocate | Strategist | Campaigner
🔗 SOURCES: - Office for National Statistics (ONS), Labour Market Update ~ July 2025
- Resolution Foundation, “Real Wages and Work” ~ June 2025
- Home Office Migration Report ~ Q2 2025
- Shelter UK, Key Worker Housing Briefing ~ 2025
- BMA NHS Workforce Report ~ 2025
- YouGov Youth Intentions Survey ~ June 2025
- Zoopla Rental Index ~ July 2025
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