We are fixing the UK drone industry.

I started my career flying drones commercially for construction site monitoring and complex roof surveys. It didn't take long to realise there was a massive problem in the industry.

Property managers, construction firms, and marketing agencies were blindly hiring drone operators off Facebook or Google — completely unaware that the drone pilots they hired didn't hold the correct Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) licences or commercial public liability insurance.

If an uninsured or unsuitable operator causes damage, the client can face disruption and difficult questions about contractor due diligence.

And insurance is only half the problem. Even when nothing crashes, hobbyists routinely deliver the wrong thing: blurry imagery, incomplete coverage, a dataset your surveyor can't actually process. Deadlines slip, planning applications stall, and clients end up paying twice — once for the cheap drone pilot, and again for a qualified drone operator to come back and redo the work properly.

I created HireDronePilot to solve this. We are a curated introduction platform. Before a profile is marked verified, my team and I record checks of the qualifications, insurance documents, and experience supplied by that pilot. You save time comparing relevant operators while still agreeing the project-specific flight plan, contract, and deliverables directly with your chosen pilot.