UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) was formed in 2018, as a result of the Higher Education and Research Act. UKRI brings together:
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
- Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
- Innovate UK
- Medical Research Council (MRC)
- Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
- Research England
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Since it was formed, UKRI has been working to ensure that we capture the benefits of creating a single organisation made up of these nine parts, building on the long-established strengths of the founding parts to deliver more.
These value-adding benefits include:
- Achieving greater operational efficiency by sharing professional services such as finance, human resources, estates management, communications and information technology.
- Supporting better collaborative working across disciplines and across sectors to foster an outstanding research and innovation system for the UK.
- Creating a better interface with government to ensure public investment in research and innovation is delivering on government priorities, and that there is a deep understanding across government of the benefits of research and innovation for the UK.
Our workforce and organisation have evolved over time to capture these benefits. Our workforce can be divided into three main categories.
Workforce categories
Research-facing staff
These are staff whose work is directly attributable to research-facing activity, including the scientists and technicians who work in our national science facilities, institutes and units.
Delivering for others
Staff funded through means other than our core allocation to deliver managed programmes or special funded business cases, for example for other government departments. This work fluctuates with the needs of departments, who commission and fund UKRI to deliver for them.
Professional services staff
These staff are funded through our ‘operational expenditure’ budget. It includes staff designing and delivering research and innovation investments, as well as those responsible for our core operational activities such as finance and human resources.
Workforce distribution across councils
Our workforce can be mapped across each of our nine councils or into our cross-council directorates.
There has been significant interest in the number of staff working within different parts of UKRI, typically focused on the size of cross-council teams compared to the size of the councils.
Because we work by harnessing the collective expertise from across the organisation, this mapping does not provide an accurate reflection of how we deliver on our strategy.
Staff roles will include a mix of activities focused on a specific council or spread across all councils. Some staff will be almost entirely council-focused, and some almost entirely cross-council focused, but all staff have a mix of council and cross-council activities in their work.
More than half our staff work in our wholly owned institutes and national laboratories. These are part of MRC, NERC and STFC.
Our changing workforce
UKRI’s current workforce (2024 to 2025) is organised across senior management, councils, cross-council functions and shared operational services.
See our organogram for size of UKRI constituent parts 2024 to 2025
Staff numbers are organised as follows (listed as full-time equivalents (FTE)).
Chief Executive Officer and Chief Finance Officer: 19 FTE
Councils:
- AHRC: 117 FTE
- BBSRC: 166 FTE
- ESRC: 202 FTE
- EPSRC: 217 FTE
- Innovate UK: 811 FTE
- MRC: 1,172 FTE
- NERC: 1,441 FTE
- Research England; 90 FTE
- STFC: 3,153 FTE
Cross-council functions:
- Data, digital, and information governance: 280 FTE
- External affairs and communication: 97 FTE
- Finance: 248 FTE
- Human resources: 168 FTE
- Investment, planning and strategy: 98 FTE
- Legal: 15 FTE
- Operational delivery: 202 FTE
Shared operational services:
- Infrastructure: 11 FTE
- International: 116 FTE
- People, culture and talent: 69 FTE (includes delivery of Interdisciplinary Responsive Mode)
Note that many cross-council activities are hosted within a council.
Because the organisational structures have evolved dynamically over time to respond to changing government priorities and to research and innovation opportunities, it is not straightforward to track workforce numbers over time at this level of granularity.
To provide a reflection of the evolution of UKRI, table 1 presents the data for the three main categories of staff, tracked over the last spending review period.
Table 1: UKRI staff numbers by category from year 2022-2023 to year 2024-25
| Year | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research-facing | 4,619 | 4,978 | 5,458 |
| Delivering for others | 346 | 557 | 550 |
| Professional services | 2,931 | 2,751 | 2,647 |
| Total | 7,896 | 8,286 | 8,655 |
Figure 1: Bar chart of UKRI staff numbers by category
Stack chart of UKRI staff categories 2022-23 to 2024-25
The main trends are:
- Staff numbers in our owned institutes have grown significantly, often due to success in attracting funding from other sources.
- Staff associated with specific programmes, for example research and innovation programmes delivered on behalf of other government departments, have increased as we have grown our role as an expert delivery partner for research and innovation investments.
- Staff numbers associated with the delivery of our core professional services have reduced over time. These staff include those designing and delivering research and innovation investments, as well as those responsible for our core operational activities such as finance and human resources.
Table 2: Average FTE for UKRI ‘Research-facing’ staff category, by year
| Council or team | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AHRC | 1 | 3 | 14 |
| BBSRC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| EPSRC | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| ESRC | 17 | 24 | 44 |
| Innovate UK | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| MRC | 876 | 895 | 979 |
| NERC | 1,123 | 1,219 | 1,286 |
| Research England | 1 | 3 | 21 |
| STFC | 2,564 | 2,780 | 3,048 |
| UKRI cross-council services | 3 | 2 | 43 |
| UKRI International | 34 | 49 | 21 |
| People, Culture and Talent | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Infrastructure | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 4,618 | 4,978 | 5,459 |
Table 3: Average FTE for UKRI ‘Delivering for others’ staff category, by year
| Council or team | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AHRC | 1 | 7 | 5 |
| BBSRC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| EPSRC | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| ESRC | 15 | 17 | 7 |
| Innovate UK | 172 | 246 | 324 |
| MRC | 2 | 8 | 3 |
| NERC | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Research England | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| STFC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| UKRI cross-council services | 149 | 229 | 183 |
| UKRI International | 13 | 44 | 28 |
| People, Culture and Talent | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Infrastructure | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 359 | 558 | 558 |
Table 4: Average FTE for UKRI ‘Professional services’ staff category, by year
| Council or team | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AHRC | 108 | 100 | 98 |
| BBSRC | 165 | 151 | 164 |
| EPSRC | 218 | 213 | 211 |
| ESRC | 154 | 149 | 150 |
| Innovate UK | 591 | 566 | 487 |
| MRC | 181 | 177 | 189 |
| NERC | 175 | 156 | 155 |
| Research England | 70 | 68 | 68 |
| STFC | 117 | 112 | 104 |
| UKRI cross-council services | 985 | 911 | 901 |
| UKRI International | 96 | 76 | 67 |
| People, Culture and Talent | 69 | 66 | 69 |
| Infrastructure | 5 | 7 | 11 |
| Total | 2,934 | 2,752 | 2,674 |
Looking at our core operational expenditure, full time equivalent staff numbers have been reduced while our budget has significantly increased over this period. As a result, our operational expenditure per pound has decreased.
Table 5: FTE staff expenditure in £million from year 2022 to 2023, to year 2024 to 2025
| Budget | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional services, Business as Usual Budget | £291m | £285m | £255m |
| Core Capital Budget | £8117m | £8603m | £8874m |
The professional services expenditure over the same period as percentage of Core Capital are:
- 2022 to 2023: 3.59%
- 2023 to 2024: 3.31%
- 2024 to 2025: 2.87%
This overall ratio hides the diversity in our delivery portfolio. Some delivery mechanisms are more expensive to operate, particularly where there is significant post-award active management, for example our challenge-led funding programmes.
It is also important to note that establishing new programmes is generally more costly in the early years, as new approaches are introduced. We typically embed careful monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of these programmes, which can also add to the overall cost.