Regional distribution of funding

Contents

2018 to 2019 regional distribution of funding

The 2018 to 2019 findings offer more detailed data than before, covering most of our activities. They include information on funding from the research councils, Innovate UK and Research England.

The data and report was corrected on 28 April 2021 after we found out that that some post codes for existing organisations in receipt of research councils funding in our systems were invalid and no NUTS region has been assigned to them.

Table 1 and table 6, figures 1, 2, 10 and 11 in the report have been updated, together with the data available provided for download in the research councils and Overall UKRI sections.

Report

Read the full report (PDF, 14MB).

The report:

  • maps the distribution of research and development spend across the country
  • gives contextual data for the different types of UK funding.

The data shows that all nations and regions of the UK benefit from some UKRI support. When reviewing the data it is essential to consider the regional contexts explained in the report.

Detailed information about how the data was produced is explained in the methodology section of the report.

Data

There are 24 tables of data, provided in comma-separated value (CSV) format.

The financial data is the amount of funding spent in the financial year 2018 to 2019. It is not necessarily the amount being allocated in that year, with the exception of Research England and the quality-related equivalent data from the devolved administrations (DAs).

Research council spend

NUTS 1 areas:

All NUTS 2 areas (CSV, 2KB).

Innovate UK spend

NUTS 1 areas:

All NUTS 2 areas (CSV, 2KB).

Research England and equivalent data from devolved administrations

NUTS 1:

NUTS 2:

Overall UKRI

UKRI spend for the whole of the UK (CSV, 1KB).

About the data’s sources

Some research council grants have negative values because a sanction has been placed on the grant holder.

All the research council spend files include data from UKRI administrative systems funding data. The contextual data is from these sources:

All the Innovate UK spend data files include data from Innovate UK Data Services. The contextual data is from these sources:

Some of the Research England and devolved administrations data is for the whole of the UK and some for England only. See the note on each.

The Research England and devolved administrations data used was originally for the academic year but has been adjusted to cover the financial year. See the methodology in the report for more detail.

For the Research England and devolved administrations quality-related and quality-related equivalent funding by number of higher education institutions in receipt of quality-related funding, the total number of higher education institutions receiving quality-related funding in academic year 2017 to 2018 is 155, compared to 152 in academic year 2018 to 2019. For this publication we are using the academic year 2018 to 2019 number.

In the Research England and devolved administrations data, ‘researchers’ is the combination of staff and student researchers. Staff researchers have been defined as staff who are on an academic contract that is research only or an academic contract that is both teaching and research. Student researchers have been defined as those completing a postgraduate research degree.

These are the Research England and devolved administrations data sources:

The overall UKRI data covers financial year 2018 to 2019. It includes:

  • research councils
  • Innovate UK
  • quality-related
  • quality-related equivalent.

It does not include:

  • the Higher Education Innovation Fund, which only covers England
  • spend data on research infrastructure capital and upkeep investment.

Last updated: 7 December 2023

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