The Chancellor released his Comprehensive
Spending Review (CSR) this week. It is fair to say that our worst fear of a
cut to research funding was not realised and, to his credit, the Chancellor has
kept the research baseline funding at real costs - this means in line with
inflation and better than the cash settlement we were expecting as a "best
case" scenario.
Nonetheless, the CSR does place a significant
part of the research budget in a global challenges fund and as yet it is not
clear how this will be managed; it could be top sliced or accounted for in the
different parts of the new Research UK structure, which is likely to become a
reality. Thus the various parts of the research base will report into a
director of Research UK in line with the recommendations of the Nurse
review, which recommends keeping the research councils, but
strengthening their overall leadership.
BGS should be able to exploit the interface
with a number of the research areas of Research UK and it is good that this is
now an explicit opportunity, rather than something to be encouraged. However,
the way research and innovation funding is awarded and evaluated will change in
the next few years and BGS needs to be prepared to defend with quantitative
based metrics, both its research and its public good value. I also note that the research council has yet
to decide its different allocations to individual councils and then internally
within NERC.
The Midlands Energy Research Accelerator (ERA)
was allocated a £60 million and the Energy Test Bed in Chester were cited. Thus
we are well positioned in the geoenergy area, with investment in gas, new
nuclear and energy storage. Notwithstanding this, the decision to remove
the funding from the Carbon Capture and Storage pilot projects is perplexing
and we will need to evaluate where best BGS should be positioning itself.
Major infrastructure and capital investments
were also outlined and BGS will need to provide the underpinning geological
models.
Although the
result is positive for science, both in research (discovery and applied) and
innovation, this does not affect the restructuring plan that we have announced.
The
significant pay cost pressures on our budget from 2016/17 mean that BGS must
create budgetary headroom and restructuring will enable it to position itself
for new opportunities in the geoenergy, data and natural hazards areas.
Repositioning BGS in the science landscape
will be a priority in the coming months as the Research UK budget develops.
Finally, I commend the 2014-15 BGS Annual Review in
which we intentionally focussed on the Public Good values of BGS, please read
it: the science it outlines is excellent (sorry we cannot put all of it in a
short report) and the format and presentation superb.
