Briefing - The impact of QR funding

11 December 2024

University R&D is expanding human knowledge, advancing society, and driving economic growth through the creation of new products, spinouts and jobs. The impact of Quality-related Research (QR) funding plays an essential and unique role in achieving this impact.

Flexible, longer-term funding complements a grant-based approach to research by ensuring there is a pipeline of new ideas, talent and infrastructure to underpin innovation in areas which have not yet emerged as the global challenges of the future.

Without QR funding, and its equivalents in the devolved nations, we would not have had innovations and discoveries such as graphene, genomics, opto-electronics, cosmology research, and new tests and treatments for everything from bowel disease to diabetes, dementia and cancer.

The government recognises that the strength of the UK research system is in part a result of its funding allocation method. This combines competitively awarded grants provided by research funders with formula funding (QR funding and equivalents in the devolved nations) allocated to universities largely based on their research performance through the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

However, strategic uses of QR funding are at risk as institutions are having to increase investment to meet the full economic cost of research. In England, this has been compounded by a 16% drop in real-terms QR funding from 2010/11-2024/25 compared to an increase in Research Council grant funding over the same period, with more severe declines in the value of QR-equivalent funding being seen in the devolved administrations.

To maintain the agility, innovation, and long-term planning that it affords, we recommend that:

• the decline in value of QR funding is addressed across the UK’s nations, and in future the funding is linked to inflation to prevent erosion of its value over time.
• when new R&D commitments are introduced, QR funding is uplifted to ensure the research base is supported to deliver on new priorities.

Find out more in our latest briefing.

Related case studies

Cardiff University and University of Manchester – turning waste into fuel

Cardiff University and the University of Manchester are partnering with BP and Johnson Matthey in a £9m project that aims to convert CO2, waste and sustainable biomass into clean and sustainable fuels.

Read more >

Small business profits from work with Durham University

Family-run frozen food distributor Eden Farm benefited from a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Durham University, a project with two associates, one in finance and the other in business process re-engineering.

Read more >