Extra £1.1 billion annually for UKRI under three-year budget

All the UK’s research councils will see their budgets rise over the next three years as part of a £1.1 billion uplift in core research spending by 2024-25, the UK government has said.

Setting out details of a multi-year settlement for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng confirmed that the budget of the country’s main research funder will rise from £7.785 billion in 2021-22 to £8.874 billion in 2024-25.

The record settlement, worth just over £25 billion over three years, was hailed as an important moment for British research by science minister George Freeman.

“As we look back at the last two years, it is hard to imagine a time when we have owed more to scientists, researchers and innovators,” said Mr Freeman. “I have never been prouder of the UK’s world-leading research base, which is why I am so pleased to have awarded £25.1 billion, the highest level of funding to date, to our national science and research agency, UKRI.”

Among the biggest winners from the three years of allocations – a first for UK research, with UKRI’s budget normally set annually – is Research England, which provides quality-related funding for universities, where the core budget will increase by almost a third from £1.772 billion in 2021-22 to £2.333 billion by 2024-45.

According to the UKRI announcement made on 30 May, these allocations will “hold the balance of dual support at 64p” reflecting the mix of institutional block grants awarded on the basis of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and other similar funding, and competitively allocated grants awarded by research councils.

As previously announced, the core budget of Innovate UK, UKRI’s research commercialisation arm, will rise significantly, up from £631 million in 2021-22 to £970 million in 2024-25, representing a 54 per cent increase over three years.

Of the other research councils, the Science and Technology Facilities Council will receive another £90 million by 2024-25, with its annual core budget increasing by 16 per cent to £575 million, although it will now have to cover the costs of membership to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), previously paid for by the Medical Research Council, and “rising energy costs on operating domestic facilities”.

Meanwhile the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s budget will rise by 7 per cent, or £44 million in cash terms, over the next three years.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s annual core spend will increase by £9 million to £70 million over this period, a 13 per cent rise, while the Economic and Social Research Council’s budget will grow by £8 million to £122 million, a 7 per cent rise, over the same time frame.

The Medical Research Council will have another £52 million to spend on core research by 2024-25 as its budget rises to £615 million thanks to a 9 per cent rise.

UKRI will also receive some £726 million in “collective talent funding” by 2024-25, up from £571 million in 2021-22, which includes “an additional £8.6 million in 2024-25 as part of a £117 million total government investment to create 1,000 new AI PhDs through Centres for Doctoral Training, as announced in the Spring Statement 2022”, it said.

Elsewhere, some £476 million of new cross-UKRI strategic programmes will be funded by 2024-25, while other existing cross-UKRI schemes are reduced or phased out, bringing the total amount of cross-cutting budgets to £940 million by 2024-25, down from £1.2 billion in 2021-22.

Overall, it meant that the government had committed funding of £18.1 billion to “existing, in flight or programmes already announced by ministers” between 2022-23 and 2024-25, the budget said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com