The idea of using gene drive on mosquitoes has been circulating for at least 8 years. [1] In that time, something like 4 million people have died of malaria, many millions more have been infected, and it is significantly impacting the economic growth of Africa. What will it take for us to pull the trigger on this?
This idea is much more than 8 years old. If my memory serves, achieving this via gene drive was first proposed in the 1980s, by using "transposable elements". If you'd like to learn more check out the following, only 25 years old (I think it cites the earlier work):
James, A. and Handler, A., editors (2000). Insect Transgenesis: Methods and Applications. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. ISBN: 0849320283
Creating the right effector gene, and attaching it to a transposable element (or some other gene drive system) as the Imperial researchers and colleagues have apparently done is only one part of the battle. Getting this to spread in nature from introductions of mass-reared mosquitoes.. well that will be a big challenge also. To say nothing of the permitting as you mention.
The press release is remarkably devoid of any technical information on what they have accomplished.
Yep, the idea is older, I have vague memories of reading about it ~twenty years ago, but that video was the first thing I found in google so I went with that rather than overstate the case based on memories.