Ten-year R&D budgets: a closer look

What has changed?

Under the new plans, individual departments and government arms-length bodies will be able to commit ten-year funding for certain R&D activities. Each department and arms-length body will operate its own selection process in line with cross-government guidance, and will have the freedom to target specific programmes, activities, and research organisations. Ten-year funding will be delivered using existing spending powers and will not require additional approval from the Treasury.

Despite the name, long-term funding under this framework does not need to be for ten years. Departments and arms-length bodies will be able to make longer or shorter commitments with supporting rationale – no details have been given on maximum or minimum funding durations. Similarly, there are no stated requirements for minimum funding level, period, or age of funded organisation.

Long-term funding will not be a replacement for short-term funding, or of competitive grant or contract funding. In remarks accompanying the statement, Lord Vallance, the Science Minister, highlighted that the Government are “retaining the flexibility of shorter-term cycles to deal with emerging priorities”. The guidance states that departments and arms-length bodies should set a maximum limit for the proportion of their R&D budget committed to ten-year R&D funding, however it doesn’t give any details on how high this limit should be.

However, the guidance states that these criteria are only one part of the Government’s approach to ten-year funding and that they do not preclude other forms of delivery or recipient. It does not provide further elaboration on what these other forms might look like, however.

Also suggested in the guidance for departments and arms-length bodies is that they should engage Chief Scientific Advisers (and their equivalents), as well as advisory panels of external experts, to provide advice on long-term funding decisions.

The CaSE view

In October 2024, CaSE convened a roundtable of sector specialists, including funders, universities, businesses, research institutes, and senior civil servants, which produced a set of recommendations for long-term R&D budgets.

We are pleased to see the Government take on board most of these recommendations, which are reflected in the guidance. These include:

• A balance of stability and flexibility in the Government’s commitment to maintain flexibility through short-term funding
• The use of existing mechanisms to minimise additional bureaucracy
• Consideration of the additional value of long-term funding compared to short-term funding in the criteria
• The importance of providing a clear exit strategy when long-term funding is not working

However, we would encourage the UK Government to go further to follow the round table’s recommendation to consider the geographical distribution of long-term funding to ensure more regions of the UK can benefit.

What next?

We are pleased to see the UK Government taking this positive step to provide long-term stability for the R&D sector. We expect to see further details on specific recipients of ten-year funding in phase 2 of the Spending Review (11^th of June) and following the allocation of the R&D budget. The Government has a real opportunity to continue its positive trajectory in the coming weeks and signal strong support for UK R&D through both the Spending Review and the launch of the industrial strategy. It is important that the Spending Review in June enables departments to make full use of these guidelines as part of an ambitious package for R&D.

CaSE will be continuing to advocate for sustained and ambitious public investment in R&D to ensure the UK cements its role as a leading R&D nation. At a time of global uncertainty, such funding commitment would send a positive message to globally mobile private companies and investors that they can continue to invest confidently in R&D in the UK.