My perspective on this, as someone who was very fortunate to get an apprenticeship in furniture making to retrain as a 35 yr old..
you are probably fairly unlikely to be offered an apprenticeship. I got mine through my father in law opening a business, and was very fortunate. The issue is pay, the first year they have to pay you something like £4 ph, full time, including the time you are at college (which for me was 2 days per week) the “full time course” at our college which was a similar programme of study, was paid out of your own pocket at something like1.5k per year, and was at most two days of education in college a week, and you could work part time in your other days. The problem with the apprenticeship is the second year, they have to pay you minimum wage, which for a 17 year old is still very low, but. For someone over 25 is something like £10 ph. This includes paying you for the time you are at college.
I would also say you have to be fairly robust and strong from an ego perspective - I came in from a project management job after working my way up in another field, and was very confident and the go to guy for lots of important things. To contrast this - as an older guy, I was all of a sudden very bad at something, which at the least is incredibly humbling.
If you can’t find an apprenticeship, I would say try to afford a “full time” course in a college, and either take a low paid (but minimum wage) entry level job in a furnituremakers workshop (as even sweeping up three days a week you will be around experienced people, have to give them a hand handling materials) gaining valuable experience, or work part time in. Your old profession which might be a better hourly rate. I did the full time apprenticeship, worked delivering pizzas for domino’s, was lucky I could do freelance work relatively well paid in my old job some weekends or by booking holiday, and doing small private fitted furniture jobs as my toolkit and skill set grew.
