Dear research and innovation community,
In February this year, I wrote an open letter like this outlining the changes we planned to make at UKRI. I described UKRI’s mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth and committed to working with you all to deliver on these three goals for the UK public.
The Government is backing research and innovation as the engine for the country’s future and delivering prosperity in every region and every nation. In our budget explainer we described how we will use the record £38.6 billion budget over the next four years to deliver the maximum impact on lives and livelihoods across the country.
Delivering progress
At the time, I said that we would change the UKRI programmes to align to three buckets, namely:
- curiosity-driven research
- societal and government priorities
- helping companies to start and scale
I promised that we would do that by April this year and we have done so. In ‘buckets’ 2 and 3, I said that we would stand up programmes aligned to the industrial strategy and wider Government priorities, establishing programme boards and appointing programme directors to each – we have done that too.
I said that by June we would be able to give you visibility of a pipeline of opportunities so you could prepare in good time for future competitions. We did that as well, with over 120 competitions now live, and a new section of our website outlining future opportunities through to the end of 2026.
Finally, I promised that we would complete our work to set the budgets within the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) as soon as possible. Today I am letting you know that we have completed that work and can now report our plan to you.
STFC context
STFC’s core budget is flat from £835 million this year to £842 million in 2029 to 2030. At the same time, several factors have resulted in a substantial increase in our forecast for STFC’s annual costs, including rising energy costs, unfavourable movements in foreign exchange rates, increases in labour costs inside STFC and in our partner organisations, as well as an expanded portfolio of activities. To reiterate, the budget has not been cut, but the costs are forecast to exceed the budget further and further each year.
Therefore, we needed to take action immediately, to bring the costs into balance with the budget, ensuring a sustainable position and avoiding a situation whereby STFC’s costs outpaced the funding available. Such a situation would substantially eat into other parts of the UKRI budget.
Our approach
As I said at the start of this note, UKRI’s mission is to advance knowledge, improve lives and to drive growth. Consequently, we have revisited our portfolio of STFC activities to stress-test the investments that have the potential to make the biggest impact in discovery, in application and in economic growth. I acknowledge that this is an uncomfortable process; being asked to model possible fiscal scenarios with substantial decreases in budget for any given programme is difficult, especially for researchers who are so committed and personally invested in ensuring outcomes from their work. However, I can reassure you that by doing this, you enable us to see clearly the impacts of our budget choices, which in turn helps us to propose a way forward that provides the maximum impact for a sustainable cost. I know full well how you feel – at every spending review, I have always had to prepare different fiscal scenarios for the Treasury, many of which are deeply unpalatable to consider. But this scenario modelling is necessary to illustrate our impact and to draw out our most acute priorities.
We have done this work as quickly as possible, but as slowly as necessary. We wanted to understand the impacts of choices in detail, but also to provide clarity for our sector as soon as we could, as well as taking action to deal with the rising costs as soon as possible to avoid further exacerbating the risks.
And we have done this work with you, not to you. We have held over 10 community engagement events all around the country and online, took written input from 48 project leads, and held over 30 Science Board, Council, and other expert advisory panels. Collectively this work has involved discussion and contributions from many thousands of scientists, researchers, and engineers from across our UK research and user communities.
Our plan
Our plan reflects UKRI strategy in action: focusing investment where it will deliver the greatest long-term impact. We have taken steps to protect curiosity-driven research, ensure we back the next generation of talent, maintain the major multidisciplinary facilities that keep the UK at the global forefront of research, and drive growth through more concerted partnership with industry, securing value from the UK’s best research assets.
We have been able to identify areas where we can rationalise activity without closing major facilities, as well as identifying sources of untapped value in how we deliver and share our assets with their users. The result will be a more entrepreneurial STFC that is elevated in its ability to perform world-leading research in partnership with academic and industrial users.
Just as we ask our partners across the sector to make tough choices about how they plan and deliver, we must do the same. While the majority of cost-saving measures are being taken internally within UKRI, the resulting impacts will be felt across the communities reliant on those facilities. This will give us a more focused and more sustainable research and innovation capability.
Specifically, the budget decisions announced today will mean that:
- we will support discovery research in particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics. Our support for those disciplines allows us to protect post-doctoral researchers and maintain the UK’s leadership position
- we will deliver efficiency savings in order to keep our world-class multidisciplinary facilities operational. We will continue to support operation of Diamond, ISIS and the Central Laser Facility with critical instruments and facilities continuing to operate, maintaining the foundational facilities on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus
- we will maintain the UK’s leading position in our international programmes by retaining our contributions in full in every one of our international subscriptions
- we will make deliberate choices to deprioritise our smaller facilities which make relatively more modest impact as well as targeting our technology delivery programmes where we make the biggest difference
- finally, in order to deliver this balanced and sustainable programme, we will transform our partnership with industrial users, commercialising the assets generated from our research and innovation programmes. This will enable us to realise the revenues necessary to maintain this ambitious programme
We must be clear that focusing on our most productive assets, realising the efficiency savings required and generating the income streams to ensure budget compliance will not be easy. It will require culture change within UKRI and a resetting of relationships with our partners. But the plans laid out today chart a pathway to ensure that the UK’s leadership and unique assets deliver maximum possible impact and value. Our plan avoids closing any multidisciplinary facilities now, though I must be clear that if we cannot realise efficiency savings and income generation as we hope, then we will need to close a multidisciplinary facility in the future.
Getting to this point
I would like to pay testament to all the researchers and innovators who have participated in an extensive series of engagement events over the past six months. Your testimony and your written input have shaped our decision-making and enabled us to make choices with a clear understanding of the impacts. The vast majority of researchers has engaged constructively and in good faith. It is worth remembering our duty as scientists – we deal in evidence, calmly and rationally. We must not allow populism or sensationalism to cloud our thinking, and we must surely never incite it. We have a great privilege to benefit from the investment of public money and we owe it to the public we serve to deal in facts and reason and not in speculation or partisanship.
I would also like to thank the whole of the UKRI executive team, as well as those UKRI and STFC staff working to solve these challenges under difficult circumstances. This is one organisation with one plan, not STFC fixing a pressure on their own. When we have problems, and that is in the nature of research, it is important that we act together to fix them. Every other research council will defer some activity over the next three years so that we can spend more on STFC activities than we initially budgeted, but in so doing, we will reach a sustainable position that doesn’t inadvertently damage UK research by having to take even more drastic action in the short term.
And finally, I want to thank the STFC leadership team. Taking difficult decisions is when you prove your worth as a leader. It has not been easy for anyone in the leadership team personally, but they have stepped up and developed a compelling plan to retain UK leadership and minimise collateral impact, whilst delivering maximum value for money. In particular, I’d like to acknowledge the dignity and equanimity that Professor Michele Dougherty, the executive chair of STFC, has shown throughout this process. I am tremendously thankful to be alongside leaders who lead.
Yours faithfully,
Ian