The Government have unveiled new criteria to ensure vital R&D work exploring innovation in areas such as human health is given much-needed long-term certainty.
It will enable and support government departments and other public bodies to fund R&D over a ten-year period – giving certainty to world-class research organisations in the long-term and help to attract greater private investment.
It could also mean longer-term funding for infrastructure, such as large-scale research facilities and equipment, giving certainty that the tools they need to drive progress are secured.
This will more broadly enable long-term research that tackles the key issues facing the UK, and will crowd investment into the sector from businesses attracted to the certainty of public backing.
The criteria which will be used by departments and public bodies to identify and prioritise relevant ten-year funding proposals are centred around 4 areas:
- Infrastructure and core capabilities – where ten-year funding will allow recipients to develop or maintain core national infrastructure or support more impactful use of such infrastructure, which would not be possible under shorter funding cycles.
- Talent attraction and retention – where the skills development in a particular area is demonstrably vital to the UK growth agenda and longer-term funding would enable development of a pipeline of skilled researchers, scientists or engineers that otherwise would be difficult.
- International collaboration – where there are demonstrable, additional opportunities for international collaborations with wider strategic benefits.
- Partnerships and business collaboration – where there is demonstrable need for long term partnerships with industry – including charity and philanthropy – to tackle a significant challenge relevant to economic growth, and where shorter funding cycles would impede effective partnerships.
The guidance recommends that public bodies should set a maximum limit for the proportion of R&D budget that, at any one time, should be allocated to ten-year funding. This will retain the agility to respond to new and emerging priorities in the short and medium term.
Further details on the initial recipients of ten-year budgets will be set out in the second phase of the Spending Review.
Departments will operate their own selection process, in line with the guidance. The guidance will allow departments to implement a targeted approach and allocate ten-year budgets to the specific programmes, activities and smaller research organisations that would best be able to unlock the economic and scientific benefits associated with long-term funding.
