Lamb to the Slaughter

I knew it.

As soon as I understood that the only way through was to take them to tribunal, I knew I was fucked.

How the hell was I meant to stack up against an institution that’s built entirely for them?

A CITB Levy, as I understand it (and I’m still pretty fucking vague despite the last 18 months of my life)  is a compulsory payment into a training body that every company “within scope” of the construction industry must pay, annually.

Whether your business is “within scope”?

That’s up to them.

If I didn’t take CITB to Tribunal, I’d have to pay the levy for the rest of all time. Including all the backdated levies I’d ignored while appealing this fucking stupid case.

My chances of winning the argument in their court, with their terminology and their precedent??

…Depressing as fuck.

But I had to do it anyway.

Did I have the time, energy or money? No.
Did I have a choice? Also no.

Before tribunal, CITB had already done a sterling job of gaslighting me over their understanding of what my company’s main activities were, to prove my shed-making business was “construction”. That’s what I had to argue against — their interpretation of me.

Which is kind of stupid when you think about it. I’m arguing about my business based on someone else’s subjective opinion.

I’d shout at myself — BUT WHY???

Why do they get to decide who I am?
Why do they get to decide what we do?
What gives them the authority to describe my business back to me?

Here’s a list of the things I said. A million times. To deaf ears.

1. We are not commercial construction. We don’t need CSCS cards. We’re not on building sites.
   
2. In 2023, G&M shifted 76% of its effort into Brand Marketing. We reduced volume, increased specification, elevated service and positioned ourselves as educators in our industry.
   
3. Yes, we have master craftspeople. Yes, we train them — ourselves, or with literally anyone except CITB. But we also have a digital department twice the size of our manufacturing team, making the main activities of our business everything to do with brand-led, education focused, online retail.
   
4. Seventy-six percent of my workforce has nothing to do with making Sheds.

Our business activity did not matter to CITB.

What mattered was that they could point to case law from the 1990s and say the remaining 24% of my business is “in the nature of construction”  and that was enough to condemn the whole company to their Levy.

The tribunal wasn’t about justice. It was about interpretation. And interpretation favours the institution that wrote the language. The judges weren’t there to debate modern business. They weren’t there to talk about Brand, IP, digital influence, or how customers actually buy in 2025. They were there to interpret wording written before Google existed.

Of course I knew this before I even tried.

What you don’t see on the paperwork is the cost.

The anticipation and worry of the day, what it would be like returning to a building I hadn’t stepped foot in for 13 years. I am an SA survivor and that court building is not a nice place for me to be. The retraumatisation and the exhaustion of the whole thing felt profoundly disrespectful.

• Eighteen months of emails.
• Hours poring over statutory instruments from 1992.
• Evenings trying to decode case law no normal business owner should ever have to understand.
• Time spent preparing to stand in a courtroom and argue definitions of “joinery” instead of building my company.

Time I should have been spending leading my team, growing my business! At such a crucial stage, it’s not an easy task pivoting your entire company’s market mid economic disaster. Yet instead of focusing on our strategy for growth, I was painfully arguing against an institution who could not give less of a fuck of the impact on my business.

Time is revenue when you run a business like mine. I burned through it trying to prove who we are.

Interestingly, there are only two levy bodies in the UK — and they’re both construction related.

There isn’t a STEM levy.
There isn’t a retail levy.
There isn’t a hospitality levy.

No other SME is compelled to fund a single training body, judged under a 1992 Scope Order or subject to statutory registration tests in this way.

Yet here we are.

I am once again paying above and beyond to be an employer in this country. The CITB levy doesn’t just apply to my operational team — they charge me on my entire workforce.

I’m sure my Sales Team can’t wait to get their site ticket for that hammer they’ll never need to carry.

As a small growing business, we don’t sit on piles of cash. We reinvest almost everything back in. We do it because we believe in building something that lasts. Because we feel responsible for the next generation coming through. Because legacy matters.

No one’s ever really bought into why I run my business the way I do.

Most of the time that’s fine. I just get on with it. The people who work with me get it. The customers who buy from us get it.

But institutions? They don’t.

When I think about what CITB stands for and the way they’ve pursued businesses like mine, I want to laugh and cry at the same time. What it would mean for small businesses like mine, if they genuinely helped and as a government bound body, I pay them to do this to my business?! – that’s the laughing, crying bit. 

They say it’s about training.

But when the training isn’t relevant, and the levy is compulsory, and the definition of your identity is decided for you, it starts to feel like something else entirely. I cannot fight this, it’s beyond measure and would require a law change. 

So, as I write this cheque for over five grand, bound on me by law, I do so under protest. Not because I agree. But because the system is designed so that disagreeing costs more than complying.

Imagine what that money could have done inside my business instead.