Fears that UK academic research funding will pivot towards greater use of project-specific grants have been dampened after ministers signalled their backing for the dual support system in which universities decide how large amounts of funding is spent.

With Research England modelling cuts of up to £100 million to quality-related (QR) funding ahead of this spring’s statement, there were concerns that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) would seek to allocate more resources to research projects more explicitly aligned with its growth agenda, potentially via Innovate UK or other research councils.

In a however, DSIT indicated it would “hold the balance of dual support at 64p”, referencing the ratio between funding awarded competitively by research councils and the amount awarded to universities through the Research Excellence Framework.

To achieve this, Research England will receive an additional £26 million, bringing its budget to £2.369 billion in 2025-26, an increase that would prevent a real terms cut if it was applied to QR.

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In contrast, some other research councils saw their funding cut. The Medical Research Council’s budget is down 2 per cent from £615 million to £602 million, roughly the same reduction seen at Innovate UK whose budget is down from £970 million to £948 million.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council experienced the sharpest dip percentage-wise at 3.1 per cent with its budget falling from £661 million to £640 million.

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Two research councils, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, have been awarded exactly the same amount in 2025-26 as in 2024-25 – £70 million and £326 million respectively.

The Economic and Social Research Council saw its budget creep up by £1 million to £123 million, while the Natural Environment Research Council’s rose by £2 million to £327 million.

Overall, UKRI’s budget of £8.811 billion in 2025-26 is £63 million lower than the £8.874 billion it received in 2024-25.

However UKRI has warned against directly comparing this year’s budget with previous settlements due to mitigations related to pandemic-era accounting and the transfer of some budget lines to other Whitehall departments.

It said the Faraday Battery Challenge, worth £610 million between 2017 and 2025, was now being funded by the Department for Business and Trade, while a major project on electric HGVs was also being transferred to the Department for Transport – with UKRI set to receive monies from these departments for these projects.

The “exceptional use” of a financial mechanism known as “overprofiling” during the past three years in response to pandemic-related uncertainty had also been discontinued, it said.

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Once these exceptional items are considered, the settlement is likely to be seen as a flat cash settlement despite UKRI’s 2024-25 budget technically hitting £9.1 billion in 2024-25 after science department commitments were passed to the agency.

Other research commitments confirmed by DSIT in its 4 April statement include £2.7 billion to cover Horizon Europe and other European Union programmes, £217 million for the UK’s national academies and £184 million for the Advanced Research and Invention Agency.

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Welcoming the announcement, Universities UK chief executive Vivienne Stern said it was “extraordinarily positive to see that the government made an investment in future economic growth by protecting the budget for research and development, despite the difficult economic circumstances”.

“They are right to double down on investment in one of the UK’s conspicuous strengths, and a key national asset,” said Stern, who said the sector would “applaud the science minister’s commitment to plant the seeds of future growth by ensuring that there is a balance between investment in fundamental research, as well as research which is closer to application.”

“If we want the next generation of defence advances to be made here, the kind of curiosity driven research which happens in our universities is essential to that,” she said.

Daniel Rathbone, deputy executive director for the Campaign for Science and Engineering, described the overall package as a “strong settlement for R&D” which has “seen an overall increase on R&D spend within DSIT and includes full support for Horizon Europe association, something CaSE has campaigned for”.

“However, despite this broadly positive outlook, the allocations show us that the financial year will be tight for UKRI, which appears to be receiving a flat cash settlement. This means that there will be difficult decisions about where to focus these resources in the coming year,” he said.

UKRI chief executive Ottoline Leyser said her organisation’s “allocation safeguards the capability of the UK’s world-class research and innovation ecosystem and enables investment to support the government’s five missions”.

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jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com