UKRI’s funding changes explained

It is fair to say that the way UKRI and its constituent research councils have communicated, (or not communicated) the pause to grant funding and the savings needed at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have caused quite a lot of upset in the research community.

There are essentially two separate but interrelated issues. Last week, it was leaked that STFC would need to make cumulative savings of £162m by 2029-30. In a later press conference it was clarified that these savings were necessary as STFC’s initial programme was too broad and because of the kind of things STFC funds their programmes are particularly vulnerable to inflationary pressures, currency fluctuations and the rising costs of energy.

In a session of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology select committee, Ian Chapman, Chief Executive of UKRI, emphasised that STFC had little choice but to reduce its costs base. Infrastructure at STFC is a specific challenge where funding, owing to match requirements, is already difficult to allocate, and it is likely that some expenditure that had been seeded or scoped will not happen.

In response to a question asked by Wonkhe, Chapman stated that he did not expect to see the kind of bad news emerging from STFC to be replicated in other research councils. Over time, as some current STFC commitments begin to phase out there will also be a reduction in budget pressure there too. In theory, this should be short-term pain for long-term alignment.

Over at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) several funding opportunities have been paused. MRC has explained this pause is while they adapt to new ways of working. Ian Chapman set out in a later press conference that at a top level this was adapting to the new three buckets model of support curiosity-driven research, strategic government and social priorities, and innovative companies, and at a practical level it involved updating an internal infrastructure including reallocating masses of budget lines.

One of the reasons the research community has reacted so badly is that these changes have not been well trailed. UKRI has done a good job of communicating that there would be winners and losers with the implication being that the winners would be the research that supports economic growth. As URKI has been keen to point out, the government is funding research at a record level and allocating funding against the buckets means comparisons against previous budgets is difficult, if not impossible. By implication, the flat cash settlement for discovery research and the significant increase for translation implies the reallocation of funding, but this is different to anticipating such significant changes so quickly.

Grants will reopen in a few weeks for BBSRC and ESPRC, and in the summer for MRC. Undoubtedly, some researchers will still be concerned about what the pause means for their own funding as the new grant landscape settles in the coming weeks and months.

An update has been made to an earlier version of this article which inadvertently suggested the pause in grants would impact all research councils.