There really aren't the college nor workplace placements. It's very hard to find a college place and work placement around here. They're like gold dust. They go hand in hand. You can't get a college course place without having secured your own workplace placement. Most small business tradesmen, sole traders, etc., never take on apprentices anymore because of the red tape, bureaucracy, taxes, etc., so it's down to bigger firms to take them on, which is good if you've a big employer like BAE close by, but for towns/areas with no such big engineering employers, you're really down to just phoning around local garages, local plumbers, etc in the hope of striking lucky.
In my small accountancy practice, I've got around a dozen "tradesmen" clients, being electricians, garage mechanic, plumbers, decorators, etc - only one has taken on an apprentice in the last 20 years - they all say the same thing - too much red tape, tax/nic too high, useless college training, etc. They're all getting old and WILL all just give up their business when it comes to retire as they've no one to hand it over to. They're sad and angry about that, but successive governments have ruined the old fashioned apprentice/trade learning of the 80s and 90s. All efforts put into getting 50% to Unis and they completely forgot about manual skills/trades - Blair clearly thought it a wonderful wheeze to import Eastern European tradesmen to fill the gap instead of training our own!
The one who has an apprentice is an elderly electrician who specialised in alarm systems, now in his 70s! He took on an apprentice around five years ago. Didn't plan on doing so, but his next door neighbour's son showed interest, and he knew the lad was a decent lad from a nice family, so he went down the rabbit hole of trying to wade through the bureaucracy to find out how to take him on, resulting in numerous phone calls to the local college (who he said were as helpful as a chocolate fireguard as they only wanted to deal with bigger firms, not a "one off"), all the employment/H&S policies etc which he had to work out for himself as the college offered no support, and finally got all the ducks in a row to take on the lad. Five years later, the "lad" is now fully qualified electrician and is about to take over the business as the guy is now ready to retire. He's a lovely lad, hard working, and the older guy is happy just to give him the business for nothing. That's how it should be, how it always used to be with "one man bands", but the obstacles and bureaucracy over the past 20-30 years has killed it stone dead.
Loads of youngsters want to learn a trade or manual skill, but it's an uphill battle for them to secure a rare placement and a rare college space.