I think the takeaway is that the well-worn 'record-breaking R&D spending' line used by govt when asked about pressure on university research (which they are a lot these days) doesn't tell the whole story
My analysis below, and the ONS data: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gove...
Clearly this all happened under the previous govt, but should we expect it to continue?
Yes and no. The MOD was given a bigger R&D boost than any other dept in the spending review, but no other dept other than DSIT got a cash increase
UKRI's budget is forecast to rise modestly in real terms
Universities are still the top destination for public R&D funds, but spending within government departments is catching up
In 2022-23, UKRI and the HE funding bodies provided nearly 60% of all public R&D funding
In 2024-25, that fell to just under 50%
In terms of where the money ended up, universities still accounted for the biggest share in 2024-25, but far more research happened *within government depts* than before
Much of the rise in R&D spending has taken place outside UKRI and higher education funding bodies
Here are the real-terms increases across different sources of public R&D spend
UKRI (excluding Research England)
2023-24: +0.8%
2024-25: +5.4%
Higher education funding bodies
2023-24: -9.3%
2024-25: -1.4%
Civil government depts
2023-24: +10.5%
2024-25: +24.1%
MOD
2023-24: +23.1%
2024-25: +13.6%
Government expenditure on R&D has risen more rapidly in real terms from 2022 than pre-pandemic
Getting ONS R&D stats 2 years after the fact always feels a bit...old news
BUT, I do think there's some interesting stuff in there
Namely, that while there were two years of real-terms growth in UK public R&D spending of ~9%, this pretty much took place outside funding for the university sector
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"While 34 per cent of the public say they trust science a lot, this figure has fallen from 63 per cent in 2020"
That feels like quite a big shift
Polarisation looks like it could be coming for science in the UK - people who think bias in science exists think it comes from the left
It's got to sting for recently rejected ERC applicants that blocks on resubmissions have been extended by a year
Maria Leptin said the ERC is making the move because panels are dealing with ~250 applications compared to 50-150 in the past
The message is v much 'only apply when absolutely ready':
Side note: I'm quite pleased to have got the term 'competency porn' into an article
According to the archive that's a first for RPN... an RPN-whack, if you will
The programme of research reforms in the UK, largely driven by Patrick Vallance, is in full swing and is having repercussions
STFC's budget woes are perhaps the clearest example
It's curious that a science minister with a strong reform agenda doesn't spend more time selling it, IMO
Full interview with Philip Diamond by @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social in today's issue of Research Fortnight:
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
Budget pressures have already seen sharp reductions in STFC funding for postdoc research time on new grants this year
But yesterday, STFC's leader Michele Dougherty committed to making no further cuts to postdoc funding, and even some top-up funds
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
Diamond said that towards the end of 2026, SKAO will start making data available and the first calls for proposals will be issued shortly after
“It’s postdocs who are going to be the core of all of this, and it would disadvantage the UK if those postdocs were not available,” Diamond said
“I look at that with concern because, with the large investment that UK taxpayers have put into SKAO, surely the follow-on—the funding of the students, of the astronomy—must be there,” he said.
The UK is spending £327m on the Square Kilometre Array Observatory between 2021 and 2030—around 20% of the entire budget
SKAO is also headquartered in the UK and its outgoing head, Philip Diamond, is a Brit
Diamond told @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social he is worried about cuts to astronomy funding
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Today's lead Research Fortnight story by @francesjones.bsky.social
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
Alicia Greated of @sciencecampaign.bsky.social said she wants UKRI and DSIT to explain both how they will manage funding changes to protect the UK’s critical research capabilities and “prevent early career researchers and other top talent leaving the UK”
While Anthony Finkelstein, president of City St George’s said, overall, it is a “good thing to select research areas where the UK can particularly succeed and concentrate resources on them” but that
“we need to be very conscious of maintaining our underlying scientific capability”
Marcus Munafò, deputy vc of Bath, tells @francesjones.bsky.social:
“There needs to be some sort of coordination because I’m not sure universities can be left to themselves as they’re all scrabbling to stay afloat at the moment”
Speaking to Research Professional News, Marcus Munafò, deputy vice-chancellor and provost at the University of Bath, said: “I think there’s a risk we could end up in a situation where some technologies or certain disciplines fall off a cliff—go past a certain threshold because they don’t have a critical mass of funding to support them. “That bit seems to be missing from the debate; we need to think about the research ecosystem as national capability and infrastructure that we need to keep healthy to allow us to react to unknown scenarios in the future.”
There's definitely a reshaping of UK research going on
Some of it is intentional - govt encouraging unis to specialise, UKRI directing funds for applied R&I to industrial strategy areas
Some of it isn't - unis taking individual decisions to save costs that add up to impact on national capacity
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the latter
ICYMI (because I certainly did), last week STFC published some numbers about where its cost pressures have come from
Increasing costs of international subscriptions is the biggest driver
www.ukri.org/publications...
This is really quite a turnaround - especially as final decisions about how STFC makes £162m savings is still a way off (June at the earliest)
Definitely counts as a win for all those raising concerns about the impact of STFC cuts on postdocs
Top CBA captioning from the Times here
“Researchers like ourselves, whose curiosity-led fundamental and applied research is funded by other funding councils, rely on STFC-operated facilities,” they wrote. “Without continued access to these facilities, significant areas of UKRI-funded research simply could not proceed.”
While lots of attention has been on expected cuts to the particle physics, astronomy and nuclear programme, hundreds of researchers from other fields are also raising concerns about cuts to STFC-run facilities which they rely on
UKRI's overall budget is increasing and is forecast to outstrip inflation
Meanwhile, UKRI's total budget is forecast to rise modestly in real terms through the spending review
So STFC will take up a smaller proportion of overall spending by 2030
STFC's woes have been blamed on its growing cost base, but surely decisions made in the allocations process also play a role?
Inflation has piled pressure on STFC's budget, which has stayed relatively flat in cash terms
I think this says a lot about the pressure STFC is under: its budget will not have risen (in cash terms) between 2023 and 2030
Inflation is obviously going keep eroding that, and more so with the Iran war
(Details of STFC budget figures over the spending review have not been published before now)
Monthly visa applications have been lower, year-on-year, since October 2025
We've been tracking applications for UK student visas for many months now and the trend is...not good
March figures released by the Home Office today show there have been 6 straight months where numbers were down on the year before
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Jamie Arrowsmith of @uukintl.bsky.social called it “extremely challenging”
“Throughout the most recent recruitment cycle, we saw many reports of visa-processing delays and what appear to have been unexpectedly high visa refusal rates, which will have contributed to the falls evident in the data”
Student visa applications have been down in most months of the year
Hopes for a strong January enrolment period - which sees a moderate peak in applications - to shore up university finances have been dashed
Application numbers were down 17 per cent in December and 31 per cent in January compared with the previous year
