{"id":483848,"date":"2026-03-19T10:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483848\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T10:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:39:10","slug":"as-uk-cuts-airborne-lab-worries-persist-about-future-of-funding-following-changes-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483848\/","title":{"rendered":"As UK cuts airborne lab worries persist about future of funding following changes | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Natural Environment Research Council has abruptly pulled funding for its research plane<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that curiosity-driven research is protected. He said he\u2019d been clear that basic investigator-led research was the most important priority to \u2018keep, maintain and grow\u2019 and stressed that even during a challenging spending review, the government had prioritised the biggest investment into research and development of any government.<\/p>\n

This message doesn\u2019t seem to be getting through and Vallance blames poor communication from UKRI, the funding body. \u2018There is work to be done to articulate properly \u2026 because the money is there to support people.\u2019<\/p>\n

Vallance explained that while the research councils funding biology and biotechnology and the physical sciences had halted grant applications \u2018for a few weeks\u2019, 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 \u2018uncomfortable\u2019 with \u2018some quite painful trade-offs\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ian Chapman, UKRI\u2019s chief executive, who apologised for failures in communication when he appeared in front of the House of Commons science and technology committee in February<\/a>, has now written to its chair<\/a>, Chi Onwurah, detailing \u2018previously unavailable information\u2019 to explain funding changes. UKRI is implementing a \u2018fundamental change in how money flows through the organisation and is invested\u2019 and \u2018not a simple reclassification\u2019, he writes. This made it difficult to produce comparisons with previous years as the committee requested.<\/p>\n

The letter summarises UKRI\u2019s new \u2018bucket\u2019 approach<\/a>. Funding is organised around outcomes, not disciplines. Curiosity\u2011driven 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 \u2018responsive mode\u2019 funding in 2025\u201326 is \u00a3737 million. In 2026\u201327, this maps to the new-style \u2018applicant-led\u2019 funding (\u00a3815 million) and increases to \u00a3866 million by 2029\u201330.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is important to note that budget lines are not set in stone,\u2019 Chapman writes. \u2018We need to maintain a degree of flexibility between buckets and sectors.\u2019<\/p>\n

He also says that the core quality-related research budget is protected, so curiosity-driven research overall rises slightly. \u2018By 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.\u2019 It also allows UKRI to aggregate research in certain sectors into one programme with one governance arrangement.<\/p>\n

\u2018Inter-year comparisons showing how the new bucket funding model compares with previous spending is especially important for understanding what\u2019s changing and for holding UKRI to account \u2013 particularly amid reports of research funding cuts,\u2019 says Onwurah. \u2018I also look forward to UKRI providing further detail on delivery and the metrics it should be measured against.\u2019<\/p>\n

STFC under the microscope<\/p>\n

Against this uncertain backdrop, the STFC has attracted particular attention. The Commons committee also interviewed Michele Dougherty, STFC\u2019s executive chair, who\u2019d emailed the community in January asking how they would deal with worst-case scenario cuts. The STFC has a projected shortfall of \u00a3162 million by 2029\u201330 which Dougherty blamed mainly on \u2018an overabundance of ambition\u2019. She expects UKRI to cover this year\u2019s \u00a350 million shortfall. She\u2019s looking to attract other funding in the short- and medium-term.<\/p>\n

Unlike other research councils, the STFC funds very large infrastructure, as well as basic research. Vallance told the Lords committee that STFC\u2019s main issue is overspending on facilities \u2013 international spend rose by 20% compared with 11% on domestic spend over six to seven years. \u2018This 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.\u2019<\/p>\n

Almost 60 physicists have written to Vallance<\/a> arguing that proposed reductions in STFC grants would shrink research groups and diminish the UK\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u2018We 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,\u2019 says Daniel Rathbone, the Campaign for Science and Engineering\u2019s deputy executive director. \u2018It 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.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Natural Environment Research Council has abruptly pulled funding for its research plane, which takes airborne atmospheric measurements,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-483848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}