UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) rising three-year budget for investment has been confirmed by the government today.
As published by our parent department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) UKRI will have a Spending Review allocation settlement of £7,908 million in 2022 to 2023 rising to £8,865 million in 2024 to 2025.
This represents a 14% increase above our comparable settlement of £7,769 million in 2021 to 2022.
A total of £25 billion will be invested by UKRI over the next three years in world-class research and innovation across the UK (see note below).
Three-year budget
At this stage of the allocations process budgets for our seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England are still to be set.
UKRI Chief Executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said:
Research and innovation are crucial tools for navigating the biggest challenges of our time, shaping the post-pandemic recovery, achieving environmentally sustainable and secure energy and building a vibrant knowledge economy with opportunities and benefits for everyone.
At a time of significant pressure on public finances, we have achieved this positive settlement by working closely with researchers, innovators, businesses and partners across the UK to make the strongest possible case for sustained investment in research and innovation.
Our forthcoming strategy will allow us to invest £25 billion over this period in the most effective way to support the talented people, places, infrastructures, ideas and impacts we need to foster a world-class research and innovation system for the UK.
Overall funding
This allocation is a result of the government’s Spending Review in autumn 2021 and sets the overall funding for the organisation.
The breakdown of allocations for our nine constituent bodies will be set by the Secretary of State for BEIS, on the advice of the UKRI board, later this spring.
This advice will include how we plan to work across UKRI and with our communities to deliver on the government’s Innovation Strategy and Research and Development (R&D) Roadmap. And to reach towards the 2.4% target for R&D by 2027.
It will set out how we will balance our wide-ranging portfolio in order to meet the long-term vision in our forthcoming five-year strategy.
Professor Leyser added:
There will be difficult choices ahead. We know there are always more excellent ideas, projects and talented people than there is public money to support them, and we have increasing pressure on our budget due to rising inflation.
But through the work of UKRI and our extensive range of UK and global partners, we will invest every pound carefully to realise our shared ambition and create the connections needed across the growing research and innovation system.
Next steps
Our allocations process map describes the next set of milestones and this blog from our Executive Director Emma Lindsell sets out the process in more detail.
This three-year investment settlement combined with our UKRI strategy and internal and external reviews is vital in setting a clear direction for our organisation and ensuring we:
- continue to strengthen
- meet our ambitions and the needs of our communities
- create national and global benefit.
Further information
Notes
The settlement does not include investments we manage on behalf of BEIS and:
- other government departments
- Official Development Assistance
- financial transactions
- Department for Education Strategic Priorities Grant funding.
The 2021 to 2022 budget figure also excludes these programmes for an accurate comparison. UKRI’s 2021 to 2022 settlement is detailed in UKRI’s allocation explainer for 2021 to 2022.
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