Corporate report

BEIS research and development (R&D): UK Research and Innovation allocation 2022-2023 to 2024-2025

Updated 30 May 2022

Introduction

On 14 March 2022 the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) allocated a research and development (R&D) budget of over £25 billion to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for the for the financial years 2022-2023 to 2024-2025. This is against a wider backdrop of increased government investment in R&D across the Spending Review 2021 (SR21) period, reaching £20 billion per annum by 2024-2025, an increase of more than £5 billion on 2021-2022. The following provides a breakdown of the allocations for the individual Councils within UKRI. UKRI have published an explainer document which accompanies this publication and provides additional detail.

This allocation to UKRI represents a significant investment. UKRI’s R&D budget will reach over £8.8 billion in 2024-2025, its highest ever level. This investment will allow UKRI to deliver an ambitious agenda through its nine Councils and support a vibrant research and innovation system that attracts private sector investment and drives up productivity across the UK.

UKRI’s allocations reflect the government’s ambition to cement the UK as a science superpower and innovation nation by:

• strengthening our R&D system
• attracting and developing top research talent
• unlocking investment from the private sector
• utilising R&D funding to support levelling up across the UK

UKRI’s allocations will also underpin the organisation’s first 5-year strategy: UKRI strategy 2022 to 2027: transforming tomorrow together published in March this year. This Strategy sets out UKRI’s long-term high-level priorities to deliver their vision for an outstanding research and innovation system to cement the UK’s ambition to become a science superpower and innovation nation.

In March 2022, BEIS allocated £6.8 billion over the SR21 period towards Horizon Europe and other European Union (EU) programmes, allowing UK researchers and business to participate in the world’s largest collaborative research and innovation programme. We continue to stand ready to formalise our participation to the terms agreed under the UK-EU Trade Cooperation Agreement published in December 2020 at the earliest opportunity. In the event that the UK is unable to associate to Horizon Europe, the funding allocated to Horizon association will go to UK government R&D programmes, including those to support new international partnerships. If we continue to be unable to associate, we will set out further information in due course.

UKRI allocations

Table 1 below sets out UKRI’s allocation to cross-UKRI programmes, plus the individual councils. Further detail is provided in UKRI’s explainer document. The Councils, working individually and collectively within UKRI, have a major role in supporting the UK’s R&D ambitions and will publish their own Strategic Delivery Plans in the Autumn of 2022 alongside UKRI’s corporate plan.

UKRI have prioritised further harmonising their talent investments to reduce bureaucracy, working together to make it easier and more efficient for the community to collaborate across disciplinary and other boundaries, and across the research and innovation system, including the private, public and third sectors. UKRI will transition to working in a collective manner across £2 billion of talent initiatives, building on their strong track record in working across research council remits. As commitments in the talent portfolio are long term, UKRI will not be making immediate changes to talent schemes until the new approach has been developed. As a result of this new approach, the headline budgetary figures for individual Research Councils (excluding Innovate UK and Research England) are smaller primarily due to councils’ individual talent budgets being brought together into one collective talent budget. This new collective way of delivering talent funding will result in an improved experience for researchers and innovators and is in line with the commitment made at SR20 to increase core research funding, which includes collective talent funding and Research Council budgets.

The 2021 Innovation Strategy outlined how we can support businesses to innovate by making the most of the UK’s research, development, and innovation system. To support delivery on the four pillars of the Innovation Strategy, we are increasing funding for core Innovate UK programmes by 66% to £1.1 billion in 2024-2025. This will further help connect companies to the capital, skills and connections needed to innovate and grow, ensuring our status as a leading innovation nation.

The allocation set out here excludes funding which UKRI will deliver on behalf of BEIS and other government departments through managed programmes. In 2022/2023, UKRI will plan to deliver planned programmed ODA ^{[footnote 1]} funding of £143 million on behalf of BEIS (not included in the allocation in Table 1). Outturn ODA may differ depending on transfers agreed between departments, particularly in response to Ukraine costs. UKRI’s allocation of ODA funding in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 will be agreed later this financial year.

Further announcements providing additional detail on BEIS and UKRI R&D investments over the Spending Review period will follow in due course.

Table 1 - UKRI Allocation Plans 2022-2023 to 2024-2025 (£m) ^{[footnote 2]}

	2022-2023	2023-2024	2024-2025	Total over SR21 (2022-2023 to 2024-2025)
Non-Council core R&I budgets	3,258	3,078	3,196	9,532
Of which Collective Talent	599	670	726	1,995
Council core R&I budgets [footnote 3]	4,881	5,553	5,999	16,433
Of which Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)	71	65	70	207
Of which Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)	300	318	326	944
Of which Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	621	647	661	1,929
Of which Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	121	119	122	362
Of which Medical Research Council (MRC)	548	587	615	1,750
Of which Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)	288	311	325	925
Of which Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)	531	544	575	1,651
Of which Research England (RE) [footnote 4]	1,730	2,163	2,333	6,227
Of which Innovate UK (IUK)	669	799	970	2,438
UKRI total [footnote 5]	7,904	8,373	8,874	25,151

1. ODA outturn figures may differ from allocations due to transfers undertaken and agreed between departments, budget exchanges, and any financial year underspend that may occur. ↩

2. Allocation numbers indicate planned budget for 2022-2023 through to 2024-2025. ↩

3. Non-Council core R&I budgets include infrastructure, new and existing strategic programmes, collective talent and centrally managed funding. Funding for these budgets will be delivered by Councils but has been excluded in core Council R&I figures within this publication. Taken together, these funding streams provide a substantive increase for our core research. ↩

4. Research England figures are for financial years 2022-2023 to 2024-2025. Allocated budgets for academic years 2022-2023 to 2024-2025 will vary and be announced separately. Allocations would hold the balance of dual support at 64p (this currently excludes ODA funding, but includes dual support for new strategic programmes). ↩

5. UKRI was originally allocated £25,146 million over the Spending Review 21 period in BEIS’s partner organisation R&D allocation publication in March 2022. Subsequently, a cost has emerged within the ‘BEIS Programmes’ area of BEIS’s R&D budget related to the COVID-19 pandemic. To manage this pressure, £4 million has been reallocated from UKRI to ‘BEIS Programmes’ in 2022-2023. Furthermore, at Spring Statement 2022, the Chancellor announced a £117 million package to create 1,000 new AI PhDs. UKRI has therefore been allocated an additional £8.6 million in 2024-2025 to begin delivery of this package. As a result there is a net increase in UKRI’s allocation compared with BEIS’s partner organisation allocations publication to £25,151 million. ↩