The Natural Environment Research Council has abruptly pulled funding for its research plane, which takes airborne atmospheric measurements, saying it no longer offers value for money. The decision comes at a time of considerable disquiet in the science community after several research councils paused grants and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) faces a funding shortfall. Poor communication, particularly about structural changes to research grants, is aggravating concerns over cuts.
The House of Lords science and technology committee has received an unusually high number of letters expressing concerns over the future of basic research. However, the science minister Patrick Vallance told the committee in March that curiosity-driven research is protected. He said he’d been clear that basic investigator-led research was the most important priority to ‘keep, maintain and grow’ and stressed that even during a challenging spending review, the government had prioritised the biggest investment into research and development of any government.
This message doesn’t seem to be getting through and Vallance blames poor communication from UKRI, the funding body. ‘There is work to be done to articulate properly … because the money is there to support people.’
Vallance explained that while the research councils funding biology and biotechnology and the physical sciences had halted grant applications ‘for a few weeks’, and the Medical Research Council had delayed a new call for submissions to May, these pauses reflected changes to the grant system, not cuts. However, he acknowledged that the transition period would be ‘uncomfortable’ with ‘some quite painful trade-offs’.
Ian Chapman, UKRI’s chief executive, who apologised for failures in communication when he appeared in front of the House of Commons science and technology committee in February, has now written to its chair, Chi Onwurah, detailing ‘previously unavailable information’ to explain funding changes. UKRI is implementing a ‘fundamental change in how money flows through the organisation and is invested’ and ‘not a simple reclassification’, he writes. This made it difficult to produce comparisons with previous years as the committee requested.
The letter summarises UKRI’s new ‘bucket’ approach. Funding is organised around outcomes, not disciplines. Curiosity‑driven research will be in the first bucket with research council-based, applicant-led funding. New cross-disciplinary cross-council programmes will be in buckets two and three. Funding for the old-style ‘responsive mode’ funding in 2025–26 is £737 million. In 2026–27, this maps to the new-style ‘applicant-led’ funding (£815 million) and increases to £866 million by 2029–30.
‘It is important to note that budget lines are not set in stone,’ Chapman writes. ‘We need to maintain a degree of flexibility between buckets and sectors.’
He also says that the core quality-related research budget is protected, so curiosity-driven research overall rises slightly. ‘By moving to this model we can be clearer to applicants about the characteristics of research which matter to us upon assessment. For instance, in curiosity-driven research we will value novelty and excellence.’ It also allows UKRI to aggregate research in certain sectors into one programme with one governance arrangement.
‘Inter-year comparisons showing how the new bucket funding model compares with previous spending is especially important for understanding what’s changing and for holding UKRI to account – particularly amid reports of research funding cuts,’ says Onwurah. ‘I also look forward to UKRI providing further detail on delivery and the metrics it should be measured against.’
STFC under the microscope
Against this uncertain backdrop, the STFC has attracted particular attention. The Commons committee also interviewed Michele Dougherty, STFC’s executive chair, who’d emailed the community in January asking how they would deal with worst-case scenario cuts. The STFC has a projected shortfall of £162 million by 2029–30 which Dougherty blamed mainly on ‘an overabundance of ambition’. She expects UKRI to cover this year’s £50 million shortfall. She’s looking to attract other funding in the short- and medium-term.
Unlike other research councils, the STFC funds very large infrastructure, as well as basic research. Vallance told the Lords committee that STFC’s main issue is overspending on facilities – international spend rose by 20% compared with 11% on domestic spend over six to seven years. ‘This has put big pressure on the overall system. In previous years, the overspend has been absorbed by the other research councils. We need to fix that. We need a sustainable, proper, well thought-through, structured way to fund the infrastructure.’
Almost 60 physicists have written to Vallance arguing that proposed reductions in STFC grants would shrink research groups and diminish the UK’s capacity to conduct and benefit from world-leading research. They are particularly concerned about an abrupt pause in funding for key international programmes, which could damage UK competitiveness into the 2040s.
‘We have been pleased to see genuine contrition from senior figures in UKRI for how they have handled communications around their new funding structure and cuts at the STFC over the last month,’ says Daniel Rathbone, the Campaign for Science and Engineering’s deputy executive director. ‘It is certainly the case that much of the confusion and concern has been because of poor communication. However, there are still issues outstanding about definitions, including on curiosity-led research, and the rationale for allocation of various funding to the buckets.’
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