Robin Bisson

Clarification: I'm reliably informed ESRC is not planning to pause its applicant-led calls

Wrapping this up for now but look out for a full write-up and further coverage on the topic on www.researchprofessionalnews.com

UKRI has said stuck to the line that it is not possible to compare the new way it carves up its budget with previous spending (including for applicant-led research)

Chapman was grilled on this by committee chair Chi Onwurah earlier in the session

While this is true across the 4 years from 2026 onwards, it doesn't address that annual applicant-led budgets at MRC and BBSRC appear to have fallen compared to the last 4 years

RPN's analysis found budgets at other councils were static or higher

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Chapman emphasised that "it’s not that we’re not continuing with applicant-led funding"

He pointed to UKRI's budget allocation from December, which he said showed applicant-led budgets across research councils are "all holding, so none of them are declining"

A similar pause will take place at ESRC, shifting from 3 schemes to 5:

"We’re really trying to encourage real novelty, so things that are properly blue-sky—at the moment I would contend that our 3 schemes are a little vanilla, whereas we’re saying that we really do want the blue-sky, novel ideas"

Asked about paused funding calls at research councils, Chapman said that at BBSRC:

"We’re going to pause gently while we reorient the system to be always open, so it will paused just for matter of a few weeks"

"On MRC...that pause I expect will run until early summer and then will be open again"

Worth noting that this does not amount to a denial that UKRI has shelved a planned £40m investment in an upgrade to the LHC at Cern, which RPN reported on Friday: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Asked specifically about whether UKRI will maintain collaboration with the LHC at Cern, he said

"We fully expect to continue to be a partner in LHC and to Cern"

"But on new things, on things which are not yet committed, on new projects, we can’t just layer up cost pressure on top of cost pressure"

"Hard choices have to be made, there’s no way around that"

But Chapman said that UKRI (not the community) would be taking on £100m of the £162m cost savings

"We have to find a way of being more efficient, of running our facilities more efficiently, of using fewer people to run those facilities"

On the impact on jobs and projects of STFC cost-savings, Chapman said:

"We have not made decisions about exactly what we’re going to do about it, so we are beginning to ask grantholders: if [STFC] did reduce grants in the future, what implications would that have for the science that is achievable"

"I realise that this causes upset, it causes uncertainty, it actually causes people to actually worry about their jobs"

"It’s my organisations fault for that, we have not managed that process well enough"

Chapman said there were plans to talk about the decisions UKRI has made with stakeholders, but:

"We were not able to do that because of information leaks outside the organisation and so we ended up having to rush comms out when we hadn’t done that engagement, for which I am very sorry"

Asked if UKRI is failing to take the research community with it on reforms, Chapman said:

"We have not done our communications in the right way over the last month or so"

"We have not done a good enough job of engagement...that happened because of information security not being good enough"

Previous leadership implicated:

"Some decisions had been taken where we’d hoped for a settlement which allowed us to provide the operational cover of all of these additional projects—that settlement was not what we got, and so we now have to make some choices about how we rectify that situation"

Given that STFC's executive chair Michele Dougherty said that the council will be "ceasing or reducing investments in many of the projects that STFC currently supports", that sounds like cuts

Chapman clarified: "we’re having to make cost reductions, it’s not a cut in budget"

Talking about STFC having to find £162m in cost reductions in its budget by 2029-30, Chapman claimed:

"We’re not having any cuts" but went on to say that STFC has "started more projects than we can afford"

"we do not have the operational cost expenditure cover to run all of those projects"

Last week, RPN broke a string of stories on significant changes to funding across a number of research councils (see thread below)

This morning, UKRI chief executive is appearing at the Commons science committee, where he is being asked about them by MPs

Here are some key moments so far 🧵

Today, UKRI published a letter from its chief executive, Ian Chapman, which follows a week of reporting on concerns about funding councils by our news desk.

Scroll down for our agenda-leading coverage.

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UKRI shelves physics infrastructure projects worth £280m - Research Professional News Exclusive: Major international collaborations with Cern and US Department of Energy in jeopardy

Full story by @francesjones.bsky.social

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

One project impacted is a £58.8m UK contribution to a major new particle accelerator facility, the Electron-Ion Collider, being built at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, led by the US Department of Energy
...

UKRI said it had reviewed a number of Infrastructure Fund projects which had been planned but were yet to begin

"Some projects, which had begun scoping work subject to business case approval, have been paused or discontinued," the funder said

The projects had been announced as funded in 2024
...

People involved told @francesjones.bsky.social that pulling funding will severely damage the UK’s reputation as a reliable international collaborator and put hundreds of potential jobs in doubt

Another two projects were planned national facilities for electron diffraction and mass spectrometry
...

The leaders of four major physics infrastructure projects due to receive over £280m from UKRI were told in December they have “not been prioritised” for funding

The projects include an upgrade to the LHC at Cern and a new US particle accelerator
...

Another big exclusive from @francesjones.bsky.social on cuts to UK physics funding

MRC instructs grant review boards to slash funding rates - Research Professional News Boards asked to recommend just three applications for funding, as BBSRC also suspends calls

Further impacts from UKRI "period of transition" as it shifts more to "national priorities" after spending review.

MRC tells grant boards to cut funding rates; BBSRC pauses applicant-led calls

By @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social @robinbisson.bsky.social

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

‘Grave’ concerns over applicant-led funds at UK research councils - Research Professional News Figures suggest reductions at MRC and BBSRC, with questions hanging over pending MRC grant applications

Why is this happening? UKRI is overhauling its funding. Curiosity-driven research will remain the biggest area of funding (compared to government priorities or innovation) but budgets for applicant-led research at MRC and BBSRC appear to have shrunk

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

MRC instructs grant review boards to slash funding rates - Research Professional News Boards asked to recommend just three applications for funding, as BBSRC also suspends calls

Full story by @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social and me

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

...Updates for both MRC and BBSRC are expected in spring, but the suspensions are causing anxiety in the UK's biomedical community...