Today the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee has published the ‘high-level mapping’ by UKRI of the new ‘buckets’ system promised by Prof Sir Ian Chapman when he appeared before the Committee on 3^rd February.

Over the last few weeks there have been several developments on the new UKRI funding structure. You can see our summary of what has happened previously here. We also wrote to Prof Sir Ian Chapman, CEO of UKRI, last week to seek further clarification, which you can see here.

The ‘high-level mapping’ UKRI has provided the select committee is an important first step to be able to make comparisons between upcoming allocations and previous years’ investment.

Since the new UKRI funding allocations were published last year, CaSE has been calling for access to past comparisons to allow proper understanding and scrutiny of the new ‘buckets’ model. It is pleasing to see UKRI move away from their position that comparisons are impossible or too difficult and provide this useful clarity.

In our letter on February 24^th, we asked Sir Ian “Can you explain fully what is counted as ‘curiosity-led research’ (‘bucket one’) and why those classification decisions were made? A common understanding of curiosity-driven research is research motivated by the intrinsic desire to understand something – yet this is not a definition that you could apply to all QR [quality-related research] funding despite it appearing entirely in bucket one.”

The mapping shows that the curiosity-led research (‘bucket one’) is applicant-led research, QR, and a sprinkling of smaller items from across UKRI. Applicant-led funding and QR are increasing from financial years 2025-26 to 2026-27, but overall curiosity-led research is receiving a smaller share of the increase in 2026-27 than other ‘buckets’. From this mapping, it appears ‘curiosity-led’ research as UKRI are defining it, is being protected, and is over 50% of the total investment. However, as we said in our question to Sir Ian, QR is not all curiosity-led, it is at best ‘non-Government directed’. This eliding of definitions is part of the reason that there is confusion around the statement that curiosity research is protected. Further, the statement that curiosity-led research is over 50% of the total budget risks looking dis-ingenious when a big chunk of it is QR funding.

It is positive that ‘applicant-led’ funding increases year-on-year from £815m in 2026-27 to £821 million in 2027-28, £836 million in 2028-29, and £866 million in 2029-30.

The letter to the select committee also sets out how UKRI will report on its progress moving to the new ‘bucket’ model – with a new strategy and delivery plan due to be published in Spring with a refreshed scorecard to measure progress.

Later today the Secretary of State for Science Innovation and Technology, Liz Kendall, and the Science Minister, Lord Vallance will appear before the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee. We will update this piece with any outcomes from that session.

Update 17:00 Tuesday 3^rd March

UKRI have published a video of Ian Chapman giving further information about the funding restructure (‘buckets’) and Lord Vallance was questioned about it at the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee. The Sankey diagram from UKRI is now also available here.

Lord Vallance was very strong at the Committee on the importance of curiosity-led research, which is very welcome. He also gave a rationale for QR being in ‘bucket one’ – that it is not worth the time and effort required to break QR down further to allocate it to different ‘buckets’. This protection of curiosity-led research is also emphasised by Sir Ian in the video, and an accompanying article in WonkHE.

There is enough information now to say that – on the UKRI definition – curiosity-led research is being protected across the spending review period. That does not mean that there aren’t outstanding questions about definitions, and the rationale for allocation of various funding to the buckets. And of course, concerns about Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have not been fully resolved. Lord Vallance reiterated that no decisions have been made and that the particle physics and astronomy community have “a very legitimate concern”.