It’s hard to imagine how an organisation with a remit the size of UKRI’s can easily slot into the ambitions of the government of the day.

For this government some of the work UKRI and its research councils do is obviously aligned to missions like research council funding for sustainability research, some of it like QR has little directly to do with missions, and then there is a big swathe of funded projects, programmes, and people in the middle whose work sometimes bumps into the government’s missions and other times it doesn’t. Unlike ARIA which is free to pursue what it likes or public sector research establishments (which are sometimes sponsored by UKRI) which has a more directed purpose UKRI has a big complicated remit.

UKRI has signalled a new approach in the appointment of directors to its Research and Development Mission Programme. The programme is described as:

The Research & Development Missions Programme (RDMP) is a new, targeted UK programme designed to support the Government’s National Missions and support delivery of the milestones in the Government’s Plan for Change. The primary objective of the RDMP is to fund targeted research and innovation (R&I), including technology development, to solve critical problems unique to each mission to improve people’s lives and create growth. An initial investment of £25 million was announced in the autumn budget, with UKRI leading, in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Government Mission teams, on focussed Research and Innovation (R&I) Challenges to respond to and develop solutions for the Problems in each Mission.

The Challenge Directors will have “autonomy to develop necessary interventions, foster cross sector partnerships, ensure co-investment by industry and third sector, and adjust activities as needed.” So far so interesting.

Each of the government’s missions has a director attached. This means there is one for economic growth, one for “kickstarting the NHS,” one for making streets safer, one for breaking down barriers to opportunity, and one for clean energy. In reading the job description it seems work will emerge from a mixture of the mission boards the cross-departmental groups aligned to the missions, DSIT, the government mission teams, the interests of the directors, and the Research and Development Mission Hub which will be led by a yet to be appointed UKRI Research and Development Mission Programme Director who will report to the Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Effectively, government has set its direction with a set of missions which will be translated by UKRI through its new mission programme director with responsibilities for mission delivery allocated across research councils through the challenge directors. For the government the most successful version would be a set of people that can move the machinery of research toward achieving its missions. The least successful version would be spending £25m of funding on parallel structures and new ideas that are aligned to the missions but don’t align the rest of the system to the missions.

Good research requires stability and the temptation of every government is to continually change its priorities. As the Institute for Government points out in February 2023 Starmer first set out his six missions, in June 2024 he then set out his six steps for change, and there is now a plan for change built on the “foundations of economic stability, economic security and border security.” The missions are fixed but only as long as they serve a purpose. The number of plans, pillars, and shifting foundations, risks UKRI’s new roles being caught in the gap between what the government says it will do and what it actually does.

An equally large challenge is how these roles will slot into the rest of the organisation’s priorities. Having roles spread across research councils is a sensible way to influence, invest, cajole, collaborate, and drive activity. The downside is that public bureaucracies are hard to change and without sufficient buy in from the wider research community it is easy to see how these roles might become lost in the machine. Encouragingly, the job roles indicate that directors will be empowered to “ […] redirect investment as needed to ensure timely impact. Influence the Government Mission team to establish robust delivery and impact plans, ensuring expected measurable outcomes are achieved.”

A step forward to aligning government priorities with research activity and a further move toward crowding in expertise beyond traditionally research roles. Their success will not be lack for interest but dependent on consistency from government and the alignment of the research ecosystem.