Introduction
This technical guide is aimed at those in planning and finance offices who need to have a good understanding of how Research England’s Specialist Provider Element (SPE) grants are calculated.
For information about the strategic purpose of our funding refer to How we fund higher education providers (HEPs).
Common principles and definitions are provided in general notes for Research England technical guides.
Eligibility
Refer to the Research England terms and conditions for general eligibility conditions for our funding.
To receive SPE funding, HEPs must also meet the following criteria:
- have below 1000 FTE academic staff
- be in receipt of mainstream quality-related research (QR) funding
- have received SPE funding in the first year of the SPE fund (2022 to 2023), when HEPs were also required to have at least 75% of their staff FTE in one HESA cost centre, or at least 90% of their staff FTE in two HESA cost centres
Data used
Allocations are made in proportion to the sum of the quality-related research (QR) allocations that HEPs receive in the same year. This includes:
- Mainstream QR (including London Weighting)
- QR research degree programme supervision funding
- QR business research element
- QR charity support fund
- QR funding for National Research Libraries
Calculation method
Step 1
A volume measure is calculated for each HEP as the sum of QR allocations from the current funding year.
Step 2
The SPE budget is distributed in proportion to each HEP’s volume measure.
Step 3
The conditions specified in Summary of constraints are applied. Any surplus is redistributed in proportion to each HEP’s volume measure, excluding any HEPs which have reached the maximum allocation.
Step 4
Step 3 is repeated until the SPE budget is distributed exactly.
Summary of constraints
SPE allocations have a maximum allocation of 10% of the SPE budget.