UKRI’s Three Year Budget Confirmed as BEIS Announces R&D Budget Partner Allocations

A total of £25 billion will be allocated to UKRI over 2022-25 while £6.8 billion is ringfenced to support Horizon Europe association.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has set out how it will allocate its £39.8 billion research and development budget to partner organisations over 2022-23 to 2024-25, with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) set to be allocated a total of £25 billion to support research and innovation in all disciplines throughout the UK.

The figures derive from the Government’s Spending Review in autumn 2021, and confirmed that UKRI will have a total budget of £7,908 million in 2022-23, rising to £8,373 million in 2023-24, before reaching £8,865 million in 2024-25. The allocation breakdown for UKRI’s nine constituent bodies – the seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England – will be announced later in spring.

In addition to UKRI’s allocation, a total of £6.8 billion has been ringfenced to support the UK’s association to the Horizon Europe, Euratom Research & Training, and Fusion for Energy programmes. The Government reiterated its readiness to formalise the UK’s association to Horizon Europe; however, if this is not possible, these funds will instead be allocated to UK government R&D programmes, including those to support new international partnerships. The Government will set out further information about any replacement programmes in due course.

Elsewhere, the figures confirmed that the new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) will receive £475 million over the next three years, supplemented by an additional £300 million in 2025-26, to facilitate high-risk, high-reward research that will support rapid transformational science and technology.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said:

“My department’s £39.8 billion R&D budget – the largest ever R&D budget committed so far – will be deployed and specifically targeted to strengthen Britain’s comparative advantages, supporting the best ideas to become the best commercial innovations, and securing the UK’s position as a science superpower.”

The full breakdown of the partner organisation allocations is available at the BEIS website.

(This report was the subject of a ResearchConnect Newsflash.)