I acknowledge that there is anxiety in the research and innovation community around the changes we are enacting at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and I am very sorry for that. I am writing to you now in the hope of providing more reassurance.
Thank you to everyone who has contacted us and met with me since my open letter two weeks ago to explain genuine concerns you have about the future. We’re taking your feedback on board about how we can better engage with you. I know full well that being a researcher is tough. When you are trying to do things that have never been done before, many things you try won’t work at first. That means that researchers and entrepreneurs have to endure plenty of defeat and disappointment, and you need great resilience to persevere in the face of that adversity. Uncertainty about funding is an unhelpful overlay when already faced with great challenges.
With that in mind, I recognise we have been running at pace and we need to engage with you more concertedly. In December, we outlined the high-level distribution of our budgets, but the detailed programmes beneath can only now be developed.
Having heard from many of you over the last couple of weeks, I think it’s right we take more time to engage. To that end, we commit to consulting widely over the next few months about precisely how we implement these new programmes. I also commit that in the future, UKRI will be much clearer about the pipeline of opportunities coming.
More detail will come about that, but for now, I wanted to make three other things clear.
Firstly, our approach to applicant-led research, what essentially used to be called ‘responsive mode’ grants, is not changing. Within curiosity-driven research we will continue to support the breadth of ideas that we always have.
Moreover, budget allocations for applicant led research will grow over the Spending Review (SR) period. In the current financial year, we allocated £737 million to our responsive-mode grants. Meanwhile for the next four years, our total UKRI applicant-led budget will be:
- £815 million in financial year 2026 to 2027
- £821 million in financial year 2027 to 2028
- £836 million in financial year 2028 to 2029
- £866 million in financial year 2029 to 2030
Curiosity-driven research is protected overall, both in scale and in scope, and this is something that is really important to us. That said, we are absolutely keen to ensure that we use this budget in the best way, so we commit to listening to your ideas about how we use this protected budget.
The second point concerns specific instances where funding opportunities have been temporarily paused. All of them are only short pauses that we occasionally undertake.
More specifically:
- within the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, we are moving to an ‘always open’ applicant-led system to make applying easier, but had to enact a short pause while we made the necessary behind the scenes changes
- within the Medical Research Council, a pause in applicant-led mode until early summer means that applicants will have visibility of funding opportunities that will come from Bucket Two rather than applying without the full picture
- finally in the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, we paused the Prosperity Partnership funding opportunity for a few weeks, so that cross-UKRI input is included to broaden the scope to other industrial strategy areas
At other councils, funding opportunities continue as before, with new funding opportunities opening regularly. We have a record settlement to invest in research this year, and the academic community should soon see significant activity across the board.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge that we do have cost pressures to address specifically across the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) portfolio, but also to be clear that this situation is unique among UKRI’s councils. We have identified the scale of cost reductions that we need to target and are presently in the process of soliciting input on the implications of a series of possible actions to reduce costs before any decisions are taken later in the year.
The majority of STFC cost savings across the SR period will be borne by UKRI internally, putting more pressure on our internal delivery portfolio, operational efficiency and revenue generation, to protect the wider community as much as possible. However, it is important for all of our research and innovation programmes that having anticipated a cost pressure, we must take the necessary steps to deal with it. As we do this, we commit to taking the time to consult widely with the community, naturally including our various advisory bodies and technical experts, before we make any decisions.
As I said at the start, we know that more engagement and information about future opportunities is needed, and we expect to be able to say more soon. Going forwards, UKRI will be sharing a regular forward-looking planner outlining expected funding opportunities on a quarterly basis. My team is progressing this at pace, and we’ll share more with you as soon as it’s ready.
In the meantime, please keep sharing your suggestions and concerns with me and my team, either through your usual contacts or directly to me at ceo@ukri.org