So this is what devolved research funding looks like

After the government dragged its heels over setting up a fund to attract international researchers to the UK while many other countries were pressing ahead – with a resultant barrage of op-eds in the spring questioning why the UK was reluctant to get in on the action poaching academics from Trump’s America – it then got in hot water over the summer about which institutions got access to the Global Talent Fund.

When it was first unveiled, on the day of the industrial strategy’s publication, the £54m fund was said to be shared between “around 10” research organisations, which had already been identified based on a bespoke formula (along with requirements for the overall awards to be inclusive of institution type and ensure a “strong regional spread”).

The actual list of (in the end 12) universities and research institutes wasn’t announced for a few weeks – and then people began to get irked that there weren’t any from the north of England. The formula was said to depend on metrics including proportion of international staff, EU research funding awarded, and use of the global talent visa. But this wasn’t presented with sufficient information for individual institutions to calculate exactly why they had missed the cut-off and by how much.

Cue an exchange of letters over the summer between science minister Patrick Vallance and the Commons science committee, which finally – more or less – led to the exact process being spelled out.

Interested readers can take a closer look at the exact machinations which led to the identification of one institution for each of the devolved nations plus the rest coming from the south of England and the midlands. But there’s also an interesting parallel with the issues around “picking winners” in regional research which we can see in yesterday’s Local Innovation Partnerships Fund guidance from UKRI.

More than half of the £500m in funding which materialised in the spending review for “local leaders” had already been earmarked for mayoral authorities and chosen devolved areas (Vallance’s letter, linked to above, notes that “the North has done extremely well in this process,” presumably referring to the process of having lots of mayors). This has already given rise to a bit of grumbling about unfairness to those universities who have foolishly chosen to be located in less devolved areas – Universities UK’s submission to the science committee’s regional innovation inquiry put it in diplomatic terms:

We are mindful of the direction of travel when it comes to English devolution and would want to avoid future policy disadvantaging some universities based on their geographic location. Already, UUK member universities in English Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs) and across London receive 86% of UKRPIF and 77% of Research England Development (RED) funding, despite representing 61% of the sector.

The remaining chunk of the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund money will be allocated through what is called the competed strand, wherein innovation partnerships between local government, business and universities outside of those earmarked areas – “including those with more polycentric geographies,” though “peninsula-style bids” are discouraged – will bid for up to £20m a pop.

The newly-opened expression of interest process will initially be assessed via a readiness check involving an expert panel. But there’s a catch:

Final decisions on those places that are successful through this readiness gateway will be made by ministers. In reaching this decision they will consider the recommendations from the expert panel, the earmarked strand portfolio and the scale of award required. Ministers will seek to ensure adequate geographic and sectoral balancing that aligns with regional assets and national capability.

Baking in a degree of ministerial fiat likely seeks to avoid criticisms that too much of the funding goes to golden triangle areas, and retain flexibility over which bits of the industrial strategy are getting prioritised and where. But obliging different areas to bid against one another and then leaving the ultimate say-so down to Whitehall has proven hugely misguided in all sorts of different levelling-up-adjacent funding opportunities in recent years.

The other thing that comes across in the guidance is the dynamic role envisioned for UKRI in making all this devolution work. Every successful cluster will get tailored support from the funder under a “co-creation offer” that fills up a full page of the guidance, to “help shape their LIPF portfolios aligned to national priorities”:

This will include working to develop high-quality, ready-to-invest projects that can deliver significant impact at scale. The focus must be to ensure the investment into clusters will allow them to compete internationally while avoiding spreading resources too thinly […] The key principle here will be focusing on strategic portfolio choices that maximise local economic growth rather than diluting the impact of the funding across all areas of a local economy.

While the press releases (and the devolution white paper) tend to frame regional innovation funding as simply putting pots of money under local control, what’s really taking place is more complex, and necessarily more top-down. The guidance recognises that certain regions will have relatively immature partnerships in place, and gives UKRI an explicit capacity-building task to get its teeth into, alongside plenty of flexibility in its assessing and steering of how clusters are set up, governed, and awarded funds. A dedicated LIPF network will be established for the sharing of best practice.

Given the targeted work which will take place in many areas, the question then returns to the areas that are unsuccessful in their bids – whether through not yet being “ready” to set up partnerships, or simply due to ministerial decisions around them being too close to other clusters that got their foot in the door first. Wouldn’t these other regions equally benefit from tailored support – if not more?