Taxes won’t save Britain’s productivity - but robots just might

You can raise taxes or cut spending, but neither lifts output per hour.

If we can’t borrow more, we have to produce more. That means embracing AI-powered automation and robotics to help people work faster, smarter, and safer.

Yet the UK has fallen behind, ranking just 24th in global robotics density. As a result, workers face greater physical strain, fewer safety protections, and less time to focus on higher-value tasks.

All because they aren’t supported by robotics or data-driven AI in the same way as their international peers.

Productivity isn’t an abstract economic theory. It’s simply how much the UK gets done on every aisle, bench, and desk across the country.

Since the financial crisis and through the post-Brexit frictions, businesses still feel that we’ve struggled to make each hour go further.

Autonomous robots help people do more in the time they have and make fewer errors with less wasted time. Whether it's picking products in a warehouse or producing products in a factory. The point isn’t replacing workers. It’s multiplying their impact.

Traditional automation told smaller businesses to think like a multinational with huge initial costs, long installation time, and slow payback. That’s a non-starter when cash is tight and demand is jumpy. This automatically locks out SMEs, making up 99.9% of British businesses.

The alternative is here. Subscription robotics lets firms start with initial deployment, pay from operating budgets, and scale only when results show up in the business. No need to gamble the farm and no need to wait for the perfect Budget.

This also allows businesses of all sizes to scale as needed. Start small, scale up for Black Friday. Scale down in January. Payback arrives in months, not years and investment is directly tied to productivity and demand.

The government doesn’t need to write huge cheques to back this. Instead, make incentives simple for SMEs to access, consider funding subscription-based operating costs for early adopters, and support short, practical training so human-robot teams can get started quickly and confidently.

Locus Robotics are already seeing customers across the UK boost throughput quickly by pairing people with flexible fleets of robots they can scale on demand. That’s real productivity, today.

Britain won’t tax its way to productivity. But it can deploy its way there, with robotics made to help people do more.

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Denis Niezgoda is the Chief Commercial Officer at Locus Robotics

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