Gap year doesn’t affect anything, i’m doing a gap year too. In fact, some unis like gap years as it shows ur resilience and want to continue pursuing medicine even after one year out of studies. I’m not sure if there’s any unis that don’t accept gap years, but if there are it’s only a few. Majority do accept gap years.

But honestly, gap year really is a great chance to get a diversity of work experience, develop hobbies to become a more rounded individual which will reflect well on ur application and to improve ur scores in the UCAT & BMAT entrance tests, massively strengthening ur whole application. It’s also a great opportunity for urself as a person before uni, u can gain new experiences and discover urself.

Assuming ur A level results are sufficient, literally just get a good UCAT score and then u can apply strategically to high UCAT weighing unis to have a solid chance. My friend had a UCAT score of 3000, and she just applied to unis that favoured UCAT and got interviews to all 4. Then u can just focus on nailing the interviews, which u’ll have plenty of time to focus on as another advantage of gap year is time. GCSEs don’t play a major factor in most unis selections either, but it really depends on the uni u select & u can just again- strategically apply. I don’t know much about transfers, but I heard it’s also more difficult?