Introduction
The UK’s multidisciplinary facilities are world-leading assets. UKRI’s objective is to keep all three multidisciplinary facilities funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) operational, and to maintain key capabilities at the forefront of global science for decades to come.
Maintaining every capability at current levels is not affordable long-term. Rather than reducing quality across the board, STFC is making deliberate choices: investing more in upgrading and developing the capabilities that can deliver the greatest long-term scientific, economic and societal benefits, while retiring others. UKRI is supporting STFC to develop a more sustainable operating model through:
- efficiency improvements
- greater resource sharing
- increasing and diversifying income
- prioritising investment in new capabilities while retiring others
As part of the outcomes of the STFC prioritisation exercise published in July 2026, STFC announced that the overall multidisciplinary facilities budget will be reduced by 15% over four years, with a focus on ensuring the UK maintains critical underpinning capability. STFC has continued to develop implementation plans for this prioritisation programme since the announcement, including building a more detailed understanding of the likely range of impacts to users of the facilities.
Wherever possible, the necessary savings are being found from efficiency improvements and opportunities to increase income generation. Alongside this, some individual instruments and services will close or be scaled back so that the most important capabilities can be protected. Delivering the measures set out in this approach provides a route for all three multidisciplinary facilities to remain open.
UKRI is supporting STFC to make these changes responsibly through a four-year transition period to reach the right balance of facilities, instruments and capabilities that can be sustained in the long term. To provide this support, UKRI is making significant extra budget available for STFC in this spending review period (April 2026 to March 2030), providing an additional £135 million to STFC’s allocated core budget of over £3.3 billion.
This explainer updates on progress made by STFC in implementing the prioritisation programme across the multidisciplinary facilities, setting out continued investments and what is changing for each of them. Plans will continue to evolve over the coming months and beyond, with UKRI and STFC focused on finding opportunities to preserve the most important capability while ensuring that STFC remains on track to reach a balanced financial position.
Central Laser Facility
The Central Laser Facility (CLF) is a globally significant national research facility, supporting world-leading research, innovation and industrial collaboration.
The prioritisation programme’s approach provides a credible path to ensuring that the UK maintains a world-class laser science capability, with CLF continuing to play a leading role in enabling scientific discovery, supporting industry and developing future technologies.
What we’re investing in
The future of CLF is built on continued investment in internationally leading laser science and next-generation capability. This includes:
- the Extreme Photonic Applications Centre (EPAC), where more than £100 million is being invested to create a unique high-power diode-pumped laser capability that will support cutting-edge science and industrial innovation
- VULCAN 20-20, one of the world’s most powerful laser systems, where £67 million will have been invested by March 2030 to enable breakthroughs in high-energy density science and advanced technologies
- HiLUX, a £17 million transformation of CLF’s ultrafast laser spectroscopy infrastructure, replacing the facility’s decade-old Ultra and Artemis laser systems with a new generation of ytterbium-based lasers
These investments will:
- maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in laser science
- create new opportunities for industrial collaboration
- support research aligned with national science and technology priorities
- strengthen the long-term sustainability of the CLF portfolio
What’s changing
Following efficiencies already made by CLF, such as merging four divisional teams into three, opportunities are being explored to work more efficiently and share capability across the wider Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) estate, and to increase automation.
Lasers for Science Facility (LSF)
It has already been announced that STFC will seek alternative funding arrangements or operating models for Lasers for Science Facility and, if that is not possible, close these capabilities. Scheduled activity to 31 March 2027 will continue as planned.
STFC is exploring future models for LSF, including opportunities to bring in additional income through chargeable access and through more partnerships with industry and philanthropy.
High Power Lasers
As already planned, the Gemini laser facility will be decommissioned as next-generation capability provided by EPAC becomes available, most likely in June 2027. Additional measures under consideration to enable CLF to operate within the agreed allocation include:
- scaling back, and potentially stopping, support in place for the Vulcan dark period either from April 2027 or April 2028
- scaling back, and potentially stopping, travel and subsistence support to attend experiments
- closing the XFEL Hub for the Physical Sciences, either from April 2027 or April 2028
- continuing to work through the feasibility of operating EPAC for a full annual programme, with constraints including availability of spare components
- prioritising the key capabilities that Vulcan 20-20 will deliver by March 2030, with planned delivery of remaining capability delayed until 2033 and subject to affordability following the next spending review
STFC will engage with the community on the most important elements to maintain from the portfolio of measures outlined here.
Diamond Light Source
The Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron serving scientists and researchers from around the world. It is a not-for-profit joint venture funded by UKRI and the Wellcome Trust. Diamond provides academic and industry researchers access to facilities that enable world-changing science. The machine generates extremely bright light that is directed into laboratories known as beamlines. Scientists use the light to find solutions to humanity’s most critical challenges, from health, food security and biotechnology to energy, climate change and advanced materials.
The prioritisation programme’s approach provides a credible path to ensuring that the UK’s world-class synchrotron capability is maintained, and that Diamond continues to play a leading role in enabling scientific discovery, supporting industry and developing future technologies.
What we’re investing in
Diamond is in the process of upgrading to a fourth-generation synchrotron, generating a brighter and more coherent light with up to 70 times the brightness of the current facility, enabling faster, more advanced scientific research and boosting industrial productivity.
The enhanced imaging and analysis capabilities provided by the Diamond-II upgrade will help the UK to remain at the forefront of scientific discovery and continue to give academic and industrial researchers access to advanced experimental facilities that individual organisations could not provide alone.
What’s changing
Diamond has recently undertaken a long-planned portfolio review with both internal analysis and external third-party input from a panel of international sector specialists. Diamond is using the outputs of the portfolio review and considering criteria including scientific output, user demand, strategic importance and industrial impact to focus resources on the most impactful instruments and mothball or merge certain others, losing some capabilities as a result.
Diamond will continue to:
- give academic and industrial researchers access to advanced experimental facilities that individual organisations could not provide alone
- provide world-leading scientific infrastructure that enables researchers to investigate fundamental questions across a wide range of disciplines that would otherwise be impossible to investigate
- help tackle national priorities and deliver the UK’s Industrial Strategy by supporting innovation across key sectors including advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, defence, digital and technologies, and life sciences
- help companies start by giving entrepreneurs, spin-outs and early-stage businesses access to advanced analytical techniques and scientific expertise that would otherwise be beyond their reach
- contribute to the skilled workforce and innovation ecosystem needed to support UK economic growth by developing engineering, technical and professional capability while connecting businesses, researchers and specialist expertise
ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is a globally significant national research facility, supporting world-leading research, innovation and industrial collaboration.
ISIS is a driving force in materials research, encompassing all the substances that make up the physical world – from the environment around us to the innovations we create. They are essential to modern life and play a crucial role in solving global challenges.
By examining materials down to the atomic level, researchers can gain insights to develop new and improved materials with transformative applications in areas such as clean energy, quantum materials and healthcare.
The prioritisation programme’s approach provides a credible path to ensuring that the world-class UK neutron and muon science capability provided by ISIS is maintained. This will enable ISIS to continue to play a leading role in enabling scientific discovery, supporting industry and developing future technologies.
What we’re investing in
ISIS is strategically upgrading its world-class neutron and muon instruments in order to stay at the forefront of global research. The Endeavour Programme is a bold step forward, introducing two cutting-edge instruments and a series of major upgrades over 10 years from 2023, ensuring that ISIS remains internationally leading in neutron science.
Using a £73.5 million investment through UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund, Endeavour will deliver transformative impact in key societal challenge areas such as materials for the future, clean growth and life sciences. The Phase 1 instruments Super MuSR and HRPD-X are currently on track to be ready for the user programme in the first half of 2028.
With its unique capabilities, Endeavour is aiming to revolutionise the development of materials for energy storage, carbon capture, advanced reactors, renewable energy, drug delivery, vaccine production, and chemical industry catalysts. This programme represents a transformative investment in science and society, positioning the UK at the forefront of global innovation.
What’s changing
Efficiencies have been made moving the ISIS Computing Division into the Scientific Computing department. STFC is also looking at opportunities to:
- work more efficiently and share capability across the RAL estate
- increase automation where appropriate
- lengthen cycles to enable more operating days
- explore options for investment to reduce electricity costs across the RAL estate
After efficiencies and efforts to increase income have been fully explored, any remaining savings will require reductions in the capacity and capabilities we can provide to users.
The STFC prioritisation outcomes announced in July noted that without alternative funding arrangements all of the muon beamlines at ISIS would close. Plans subsequently developed by STFC no longer include closure of the entirety of the muon facility, and instead balance investment across both neutron and muon instruments.
As a result, STFC expects to close at least four of the 35 neutron and muon beamlines, with decisions prioritising keeping the broadest possible range of scientific capability:
- as already announced, LoQ and CRISP have closed as there is capability on ISIS’s Target Station 2
- SURF will be closed, as there is capability on ISIS’s Target Station 2
- Muon port 3 will be closed, driven by relatively low UK user demand and staffing constraints
- further measures, such as the closure of additional beamlines, are likely beyond April 2027. ISIS will engage with the community on any proposals
In addition, ISIS will be reducing its annual cycles from four to three, resulting in 60 fewer operating days annually than would be available at full capacity of five cycles per year.
There will be changes to user support, with consumables funding for UK users of ISIS and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) likely to be withdrawn and travel support reduced. There will also be reductions in lab support for users. Accommodation support for three visiting users will be maintained, with travel for longer distances funded at a capped level.
Open calls for studentships funded through the ISIS budget have been stopped. These opportunities were additional to those that continue to be offered through UKRI’s collective talent funding.
STFC will prioritise UK-led academic proposals, access through specific agreement with partner countries, and paid-for industrial access. It will deprioritise academic proposals from outside our partner countries that are not UK-led.
Other measures to realise savings include:
- slowing down or reducing capital projects, including accelerator obsolescence projects
- reviewing the level of out of hours support offered, which will likely be reduced
- continuing funding Endeavour at only the levels agreed through UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund investment, with STFC no longer providing additional funding to expand its scope
- working with partners to identify and harness opportunities to increase industrial revenue
What happens next
Delivering the planned measures set out in this explainer provides a route to keeping all three multidisciplinary facilities operational as financially sustainable world-leading assets that provide key capabilities for decades to come.
To test whether the prioritisation programme remains on track, two formal gateway points in 2027 and 2028 will assess progress towards delivering the necessary savings. As set out in the initial announcement of prioritisation outcomes in July, if key targets are missed then further action will be required, including the potential closure of a multidisciplinary facility.
Over the coming months and beyond, UKRI and STFC will continue to evolve these plans, with a continued focus on finding opportunities to preserve the most important capability while ensuring that STFC remains on track to reach a balanced financial position. STFC will continue to engage with its partners and communities throughout the implementation process.