Author Archives: GK Strategy

The future of flight: Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations

One of the main regulatory barriers to the successful commercial application of drones is the restrictions on routine Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. Many of the most commercially significant uses of drone technology require operators to fly beyond their direct line of sight, including delivery services, infrastructure inspection, surveying and mapping, and the monitoring of energy and transport networks. Enabling routine BVLOS operations is therefore critical to allowing drone services to operate at scale. This will be crucial to unlocking the full economic contribution of drones which, according to , could be worth £45 billion to the UK economy by 2030.

The UK has succeeded in funding and running trials of BVLOS operations, though these have yet to translate into a regulatory framework that enables routine operations at scale. In 2023, the CAA selected , spanning use cases from the delivery of pathology samples between hospital laboratories in London to infrastructure inspection. These trials have begun to pave the way for increased BVLOS operations, with additional London hospitals joining an expanded drone delivery service in early 2026. Operational data from the initial trial showed cost savings of 28% and a 98.4% reduction in CO2 emissions per delivery compared with conventional courier methods. This demonstrates the significant commercial and environmental benefits that BVLOS operations can provide and highlights the potential for wider adoption if the regulatory framework enables these services to move from individual trials to routine, scalable operations.

It is possible to apply to the CAA for operational authorisation for BVLOS flights using UK SORA (Specific Operations Risk Assessment), but this remains difficult to achieve in practice. To gain approval, operators must demonstrate that a specific operation can be conducted safely, meaning that authorisation may need to be sought for materially different operations or operating environments. While this approach can enable defined activities, such as regular deliveries between two hospitals, it can be time- and cost-intensive for businesses seeking to operate across multiple routes or locations that may change depending on the specific use case The publication of a SORA general operations template in August 2026 provides operators with a clearer and more standardised structure for developing the documentation required for an application. However, operators must still develop the relevant operational procedures and supporting evidence for their proposed activities, meaning that securing authorisation remains a time- and cost-intensive process. As a result, securing individual operational authorisations is not equivalent to a regulatory framework that allows routine BVLOS operations at scale, and this limits the ability of operators to scale their services rapidly.

There is a clear ambition across government and the CAA to enable routine BVLOS operations. The Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) has been working with the Department for Transport (DfT), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the CAA to address regulatory barriers to BVLOS operations. This has already resulted in several changes. A single, standardised SORA risk assessment has been introduced to reduce approval times for complex operations; the CAA is developing a , up from the previous 90-day period, providing greater certainty for longer-term operations; and its has been expanded to enable more operations in low-traffic environments, such as around power lines. While these changes operate within the existing system of approvals for individual operations, they represent incremental steps towards making BVLOS flights easier and more commercially viable. However, further reform will be required to move from facilitating individual operations towards a framework that enables routine BVLOS services to be deployed at scale.

To further scale BVLOS operations, the CAA has set out a , which charts a path towards routine and scalable BVLOS operations across the UK by 2027. Rather than pursuing a single major regulatory change, the CAA is adopting a ‘learn and evolve’ approach that will progressively move operators from segregated or restricted airspace towards integration with other airspace users as regulation, technology and operational evidence develop. The roadmap identifies three pathways for commercial operations. The first expands operations in Atypical Air Environments, such as around railways, power lines and wind turbines, where the risk of encountering crewed aircraft is comparatively low. The second focuses on integrating low-level BVLOS operations below 500 feet in urban areas, initially through restricted corridors before moving towards shared and uncontrolled airspace that can accommodate multiple operators. The final pathway is fully integrated BVLOS, enabling longer-distance operations such as middle-mile logistics, emergency services and offshore infrastructure inspection to operate alongside other airspace users. The CAA is aiming to have operations in controlled airspace underway by 2027, with operations in uncontrolled airspace beginning in 2028.

While this is a positive signal that the CAA wants to break down this regulatory barrier, it is important for the drone sector to engage closely with both the CAA and the government to ensure that the roadmap is delivered and enables routine BVLOS operations across all of these areas. It will also be important to build greater awareness among parliamentarians of the economic benefits of drones, which will make them more likely to scrutinise progress on this issue and to apply further pressure on the government and the CAA to ensure that there are routine and scalable BVLOS operations. Coordinated engagement with regulators, government and parliamentarians will be important in ensuring that the roadmap creates a regulatory environment that supports the commercial growth of the sector.

As parliament returns under the new Andy Burnham-led government, the drones sector has an important opportunity to firmly place the development of a supportive regulatory framework on the government’s agenda and build political momentum behind the reforms needed to enable routine BVLOS operations. At GK, we have launched the UK Drones Alliance, which will do exactly this by bringing together businesses from across the sector to speak with a coordinated voice to government, regulators and parliamentarians. The Alliance will provide a platform for the sector to demonstrate the benefits of drone technology and advocate for action to tackle the regulatory barriers constraining growth, enabling the industry to scale.

If you would be interested in hearing about our next UK Drones Alliance event, which we are hosting in partnership with the Department for Transport, or to discuss this policy area in more detail, please contact jacob.walsh@gkstrategy.com

Digital health: Are we transforming the NHS or merely digitising what’s there?

Drawing on his experience as a health minister and chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, GK’s strategic advisor Steve Brine examines the government’s ambition to shift the NHS from analogue to digital, arguing that its success will depend on whether technology genuinely transforms care and reduces frontline pressures, rather than simply digitising how patients access them.

The Labour government has made ‘analogue to digital’ one of the defining ambitions of the10-Year Health Plan. It is difficult to argue with.

A next-generation NHS App, (finally) a Single Patient Record, greater use of AI and digitally enabled neighbourhood health all offer the prospect of a service that is easier to navigate, more personalised and – whisper it – more productive.

Given the pressures facing the NHS workforce and public finances, technology is no longer an interesting addition to health reform; it is central to whether much of that reform can actually be delivered. Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of NHS England, believes this to his core.

But there is an important question underneath all this ambition: how deliverable is it in practice, and are we moving further away or getting closer since the change of personnel in government?

For most people, their interaction with the NHS happens through primary care. That means the digital NHS will ultimately succeed or fail not in Whitehall, but in thousands of GP practices, pharmacies, optometrists and other community settings.

And therein lies both the opportunity and challenge.

Digital technology should help patients reach the right service first time, automate routine administration, enable better self-management and allow clinicians to concentrate their time on people with more complex needs. Used intelligently, it can support the other great shifts the government wants to achieve too: from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention.

But there is a danger that we confuse digitising access with transforming care.

Making it easier to contact the NHS is not necessarily the same thing as reducing pressure on it. If a new digital front door simply produces more follow-up work for already stretched primary-care teams, we have made demand more efficient without making the service more productive.

That distinction seems to me, as a former minister for primary care, to matter enormously.

The real opportunity is not simply to give patients a digital route to the same services they have always used. It is to use technology to change where they go and, sometimes, whether they need to see a healthcare professional at all.

During my tenure as the minister, Pharmacy First was born of exactly that thinking and I wrote about it in a recent column. It is hugely successful but that success should give us confidence to ask the next question: is Pharmacy First an analogue service in a digital age?

Its great strength is its simplicity. You have a problem, you walk into a pharmacy and speak to a professional, often without an appointment. We must not lose that.

But today we should be able to open the NHS App, describe our symptoms and be directed towards the right destination: self-care, GP, urgent care or community pharmacy. If pharmacy is appropriate, we should be able to see which pharmacies nearby offer the service and, ultimately, which have the capacity to see us.

‘Try your local pharmacy’ is mere signposting. ‘Your local pharmacy can help you this afternoon’ is a pathway.

The same principle applies much more widely.

A patient should not need to understand the organisational architecture of the NHS before accessing it. The question should increasingly be not how do I get a GP appointment? but what is the quickest and most appropriate way for the NHS to help me?

A genuinely intelligent digital front door should help make that distinction.

This is where the government’s digital ambitions and its neighbourhood health agenda ought to come together. Digital should be the connective tissue which allows care closer to home to work, not a separate technology programme running alongside it.

The NHS App may become increasingly sophisticated, but a brilliant consumer interface sitting on top of fragmented clinical systems does not constitute a digital health service. In short, the NHS does not only have a digital-access challenge; it has an integration challenge.

There is a workforce issue here also. Digital transformation cannot simply become another set of requirements imposed upon primary care. Every new platform, pathway or form of digital access changes somebody’s working day.

For a GP practice already managing intense demand, the compelling technology is not necessarily the one with the most impressive functionality. It is the one that removes duplication, reduces avoidable contacts, automates routine processes or releases clinical time.

Perhaps that suggests a simple test for every significant piece of NHS digital transformation should be; what workload does it REMOVE, not simply what functionality does it ADD?

There is an important patient dimension too. Digital by default cannot become digital only. Some patients will continue to need telephone or face-to-face access and, for those with frailty, multiple conditions or other complex needs, human navigation may become more rather than less important.

That is not an argument against digitalisation. In many ways, it is the argument for it. If technology can deal more effectively with straightforward transactions and help digitally confident patients navigate services themselves, scarce capacity can concentrate on those who need it most.

That, ultimately, is the prize.

Digital transformation should not be an IT programme imposed upon primary care. It should be service redesign undertaken WITH primary care. And the real measure of success will not be what happens on the screen, but whether technology changes for the better what happens behind it.

Crunching the NEET numbers: Is the crisis worse than we think?

Youth unemployment has rarely been higher on the political agenda. The ‘NEET’ acronym, which applies to 16-24 year olds not in education, employment or training, has become a common feature of our political vernacular: ‘one million NEETs’ a phrase now all too familiar in conversations around skills, welfare and the future of work. Since January 2026, the term ‘NEETs’ has been mentioned more times in the House of Commons than in the entire period between 2020 and 2025. The subject is likely to face more scrutiny in the autumn, as the final, ‘solutions’ report of Alan Milburn’s review into young people and work is published.

What actually lies behind the one million figure? And what do the intricacies of the data mean for the future of the crisis, and for how we assess the government’s existing, and upcoming, policy interventions in the space?

The total number of 16-24-year-olds classified as NEET has risen from 740,000 in June 2022 to one million in March this year. Since the Milburn Review was commissioned in November last year, the estimated number of NEETs has risen by 50,000, and there is little sign that the increase is slowing. The latest estimates equate to 13.5% of the total 16 to 24 cohort, or close to one in seven of Britain’s young people.

The headline number only tells part of the story. Zooming in on the statistics tells us that the NEET crisis is not, as is perhaps commonly assumed, most acute among school or university leavers. Instead, it is among the eldest cohort of young people (23 to 24-year-olds) that the scale of the problem is most apparent, and where the long-term consequences of disengagement are arguably greatest.

The older the NEET, the deeper the problem

According to ONS data, 18 to 20-year-olds account for approximately 30% of the total NEET figure. The ‘NEET rate’, the percentage of young people within a given age group, among the entire 18-20 cohort across the country is relatively low (11.4%), and the overall number has undergone a decline in the last two years. The majority (56%) of these NEETs are classified as economically inactive (not working and not looking or able to do so) with the remainder unemployed.

Among 21 to 22-year-olds, the age at which many will leave university or further education, the NEET rate rises to 17%. The balance shifts ever so slightly to 43% that are unemployed and 57% economically inactive.

The final age group, 23 to 24-year-olds, is where the NEET picture becomes much starker. NEETs in this age group account for over a third of the one million total, and the figure is equivalent to a staggering 18.2% of the age cohort, almost one in five. More striking still is the composition of that group. Just 36% are unemployed, while 64% are economically inactive.

That inactivity figure will be a source of much consternation for policymakers. We know from Alan Milburn himself that once young people stop looking for work that ‘the route back is much harder.’ We also know that 45% of today’s 24-year-old NEETs have never had a job, and that those who have never worked by 24 are far more likely to struggle to find sustained employment for the rest of their lives – a long-term ‘scarring effect’ that follows young people into adulthood. The fact that the number of 25 to 49-year-olds unemployed for 12 months or more has risen from 151,000 in April-June 2025 to 198,000 in April-June 2026 may be an early sign of this reality showing up in the data, especially as today’s 25-year-old NEETs slip out of the 16-24 limelight.

Under the Labour government, there have been some attempts to intervene. Keir Starmer oversaw the launch of various initiatives under the Youth Guarantee banner. This include the Jobs Guarantee, offering government-funded six-month work placements for 18 to 24-year-olds on Universal Credit who have been looking for work for 18 months; and the Youth Jobs Grant, worth £3,000 to employers that hire a young person on UC who has been looking for work for six months or more. Together, these policies are expected to support 150,000 young people into jobs over the next three years.

Likewise, in recent weeks Andy Burnham has proposed introducing technical education qualifications for 14 to 16-year-olds in schools; a move billed as a way to boost skills development for young people and enhance their readiness for ‘the jobs of the future’, matched to local employer need, with positive knock-on effects for career options. This proposal, alongside commitments to devolve 16-19 funding powers to regional mayors, has been billed by the government as the ‘first step’ in the prime minister’s plan to tackle the youth unemployment crisis.

There are merits to both interventions but also limits. The Youth Guarantee schemes, for example, targets young people already visible through the benefits system, leaving the ‘hidden NEET’ population with little equivalent support (those who do not receive any welfare support from the government, estimated at around half of the total). Earlier exposure to technical education may help prevent young people becoming detached from work in the first place, and devolved powers mean more tailored local skills provision in some regions. However, the reforms will do little for the large cohort of older NEETs already sitting outside the labour market, with the implementation of these reforms not expected until at least two years down the line.

The findings and recommendations of the Milburn Review will need to be wholesale and ambitious if they are to make a meaningful dent in the NEET numbers. But they must also take account of where the biggest NEET challenge actually lies, among the eldest cohort. While policymakers often point out that ‘NEET does not begin at 16’, their future interventions must be equally guided by the truth at the opposite end of the spectrum that NEET does not end at 24. The current trajectory appears unsustainable. ONS figures this week, showing a further fall in job vacancies, suggest the crisis may well get worse before it gets any better.

GK Strategy are a sector-leading team of consultants with expertise and experience across the education and skills landscape. If you have questions about government policy in the space, or would like to discuss GK’s public affairs offering, please contact:

Scott Dodsworth – Managing Director at scott@gkstrategy.com.

Natty Croucher – Associate at natty@gkstrategy.com

View from the US: The Rise of American Progressives

Erin Caddell of GK Strategy’s American partner Anchor Advisors examines the ideological battle reshaping the Democratic Party and what it could mean for investors, corporates and the future direction of US policy

Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, published in 1687, states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This centuries-old theorem may go some way toward explaining the ideological split currently occurring in the U.S. Democratic party – one that could carry significant importance for the congressional midterm elections in November 2026 and for U.S. policy for many years to come.

Republican President Donald Trump faces a difficult political backdrop approaching the midterms, often thought of as a referendum on the incumbent U.S. president’s first two years in office. Trump faces sagging approval ratings in his second term, with notable weakness on his handling of the economy due to rising inflation, as well as a Middle East war with no easy way out. As this column has noted before, Republicans are already defending one of the narrowest House majorities in American history (218-212, with four vacancies and one independent).

Given these dynamics, many Democratic leaders and pundits have suggested the party employ a midterm campaign version of Napoleon’s military adage to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake: focus voters’ attention on Trump policies that many voters view unfavorably rather than on promoting a robust alternative agenda. To these strategists, the poster child for the ideal Democratic candidate in 2026 is Roy Cooper, a two-time former governor of North Carolina running for U.S. Senate in that state with the simple slogan “Make Stuff Cost Less”. Cooper focuses fairly narrowly on criticizing Trump actions that he argues have resulted in “farmers… getting crushed by tariffs” and “families… seeing prices rise at grocery stores and restaurants.” In response, Cooper proposes a modest set of reforms such as tougher anti-trust enforcement and making data centers pay more for the power they draw from public utilities.

Cooper may well reach the Senate – he has run ahead of his Republican opponent in every poll published since the race began. But the middle-of-the-road approach of Cooper and other moderates is not capturing the hearts of Democratic voters writ large. The hard-edged governing style of Trump and his Republican congressional allies, in areas ranging from immigration enforcement to foreign policy to social spending, has, to use a scientific term, made Democrats mad as hell. And – returning to Newton’s Third Law – Democrats want their leaders to push back hard at Trump with policies equal and opposite to those promulgated by the GOP-led Administration and Congress.

Evidence of Democrat voters’ more confrontational impulse is ample in recent party primaries to select candidates to run in the November congressional elections. In June, two progressive U.S. House candidates running to represent district in New York City – Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier – ousted incumbents, while a third (Claire Valdez, a member of the state Assembly) defeated the Brooklyn borough president in a race for another U.S. House seat. All three candidates support increased government support for public housing, universal federal health insurance, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, cutting defense spending, shifting energy production from fossil fuels to renewables to address climate change, and reducing American military involvement abroad, among other progressive policies. All are vocal in their criticism of Trump. It is not just in deep-blue New York where the left is gaining momentum: earlier this month, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic U.S. House candidate in Colorado, backing an agenda similar to her New York counterparts, unseated U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who had represented the district in D.C. for nearly 30 years. Progressive candidates have tallied recent election wins in states from Maryland to Oregon.

A number of the candidates cited above, and others squaring off against more-moderate Democrats, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-leaning political organization founded in 1982. DSA’s importance in the U.S. political ecosystem can be easily exaggerated by both critics and supporters – the organization reports about 120,000 members, compared to 45 million Democrats and 39 million Republicans. Yet the DSA has clearly touched a nerve within a Democratic party still trying to figure out how best to oppose Trump and his MAGA movement – and position itself for a post-Trump future. The party’s goal to create “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society” (see below) echoes in the campaign speeches and placards of progressive candidates on the stump today. The most famous DSA member is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old political wunderkind who rode his own anti-Establishment, anti-incumbent wave to power in January, defeating Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor and scion of a well-known political family.

What is Democratic Socialism? “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society… We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to win “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life.” (Source: Democratic Socialist of America)

The recent success of DSA members and similarly inclined progressives has led to an equal and opposite (Newton again!) reaction from moderates who argue that moving too far to the left will cost Democrats in the midterm elections in November as well as the presidential election in 2028. In a July 20th note, Third Way, a center-left think tank, warned: “If [Democrats] follow the siren song of the left, they will steer their ships into the rocks. If they remain in the mainstream, they will have a fighting chance of winning not only the primary, but also most crucially, the general election.” Third Way and other naysayers of the progressive wave cite the example of Kamala Harris, who ran on a progressive agenda as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee in 2024 after then-President Joe Biden opted not to run for re-election. In the 2024 campaign, Harris proposed ambitious spending to combat climate change, an increase in the corporate tax rate and anti-price gouging laws for groceries, among other policies popular with many progressives. Trump, of course, comfortably defeated Harris in the presidential election (though the hurried mid-campaign handoff from Biden to Harris certainly didn’t help).

What does this mean for US-focused investors and corporates?

The moderate, middle-of-the-road approach of some Democratic candidates doesn’t seem to meet the political moment. Thus, we do think the progressive movement will move the Democratic Party to the ideological left in the years to come, even if “socialist” candidates remain a small portion of the electorate and the Congress. This could benefit sectors that have been out of favor thus far in Trump’s second term. For instance, health insurance companies that provide insurance under Medicaid and other healthcare programs for disadvantaged Americans could benefit from reversal of recent cuts to such programs under a Democrat-controlled Congress and/or White House. Similarly, apartment-focused real estate investment trusts (REITs) would benefit from expanded public spending on housing in a more progressive political climate. Child-care providers could see the same from federal programs to provide more support for working families. In sum, Democrats’ intense anger at Trump’s policies and persona are likely to be quelled only by a similarly forceful agenda on the other side of the spectrum – the equal and opposite reaction crystallized by Newton so long ago.