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Deeper cuts to UK research equipment

UK scientists knew after last year’s budget settlement that funding for equipment and research facilities would be hit hard. In early May, it emerged that research councils would in future be able to pay only 50% of costs for mid-size bits of equipment (such as spectrometers and lasers) requested in future grant proposals, while costlier bits of kit (above £121k) would have to be specially rationed across the country. (The Guardian carried that story, while the gory details are in a guidance document released by Research Councils UK). What’s more, the government also announced it was ditching planned science facilities.

But the crunch is more immediate than first thought for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Yesterday, it said it couldn’t afford to wait to implement the cuts, which were intended to apply to proposals submitted after 1st May. Instead, it is restricting its funding for equipment immediately. Research proposals submitted before May – and before knowledge of the extent of RCUK’s advised cuts – will be subject to the new regime.

“It’s clear they’ve run out of money,” says Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Sheffield. “EPSRC are in this position through no fault of their own – they’ve had a very large capital budget cut in a very short timescale,” he adds.


With EPSRC paying at most 50% of the costs of equipment in the £10-121k range, universities will have to make up the difference. That would mean hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds to find for institutions that are themselves strapped for cash. (EPSRC say that in past years they have funded around £25 million of equipment in the £10-121k range, and another £25 million in the £121k+ range).

RCUK says other research councils aren’t going to have to be quite as fast at cutting funds: their cuts will only affect research proposals submitted after the beginning of May.

Scientists are already preparing to share equipment across the country – and for large pieces of kit, like electron microscopes, this seems like a sensible step, notes David McComb, a nanomaterials researcher at Imperial College London. “However, this model is inappropriate for more routine equipment that is nevertheless expensive and essential for multi-disciplinary research,” he says. “For example, if a project requires access to X-ray diffraction or raman spectroscopy facilities on a weekly or even daily basis, if these facilities are not available in the principal investigator’s institution how far is it reasonable to expect the researcher to travel to conduct the research? One hour? Two hours? Is this a sensible and efficient use of the time of the researcher? There is a risk that lack of equipment will make very good researchers in some institutions direct their expertise into other areas of activity.”

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