UK SMEs 'well placed' to take advantage of growing industry
Hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the EU could be created by the growing drone industry by 2050, a European Commission (EC) report has said.
UK businesses – especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – are well placed to be at the forefront of the industry's expansion, the Commission said, if supported by quality regulation.
The report said drones – remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) – are no longer solely used by the military. There are hundreds of UK companies, mainly SMEs, who are using RPAS to provide a range of services, including photography, land surveying, building inspection and crop analysis.
The industry is also expanding in terms of leisure users, with growing opportunities to supply this market, and in a range of other sectors, the EC report said.
The use of drones has come under fire previously, with industry experts fearing that many jobs would be replaced by machines that are able to carry out dull, dirty or dangerous jobs, for example cargo shipping and search and rescue.
However, the EC report highlights an estimate by the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe that 150,000 jobs could be created by the drone industry by 2050.
A report by the House of Lords EU Committee, Civilian Use of Drones in the EU, evaluates the EC’s proposals for the drone industry set out in its paper A new era for aviation.
The report argues that mastering RPAS technology will be key to the future competitiveness of the European aeronautics industry.
But it says the growth potential of the drone industry can only be realised if an enabling legal framework is adopted across all EU member states which addresses safety, privacy, data protection, third-party liability, insurance and security. This would allow the industry to take investment decisions and create employment, it said.
In its response report, Civilian Use of Drones in the EU, the House of Lords EU Committee urges the government and the EC to develop a shared manufacturing standard for drones, such as the CE marking (kite mark) and create an online database of drone operations to track and manage drone traffic.
The EC report said it would support the emergence of the drone markets and the competitiveness of related industrial sectors, including SMEs and start ups.
However, the House of Lords report noted that there was often a funding issue for SMEs when they required to match capital being sought by their company.
Paul Cremin, head of UK Aviation Safety, SAFA and Permits, at the Department for Transport, said: "The trouble is that a lot of the companies at the smaller end are often one or two individuals working in a very small company who do not necessarily understand the route to obtaining European money."
Commenting on the report, Civilian Use of Drones in the EU, committee chairman, Baroness O’Cathain, said: “The growth in civilian drone use has been astonishing and they are taking to the skies faster than anyone could have predicted.
"We have a huge opportunity to make Europe a world leader in drone technology. But there’s also a risk—public understanding of how to use drones safely may not keep pace with people’s appetite to fly them. It would just take one disastrous accident to destroy public confidence and set the whole industry back."