Create a sustainable funding model for research in universities

Universities play a unique role in bringing many parts of the research sector together – across academia, industry, the third sector and the NHS. They collaborate extensively with medical research charities which fund considerable amounts of research within the UK’s research infrastructure. In 2023, 87 per cent of the almost £1.7bn invested in research by members of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) took place in universities.

Despite being a vital part of the UK’s research ecosystem, research in universities is not currently financially sustainable, with many institutions operating in a financial deficit. When people generously donate to charities to fund medical research, they expect those donations to directly fund that research. The Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF) allows universities and research institutes which receive charitable funding to recover the ‘indirect’ costs of doing research that charity grants do not cover – such as the rising cost of energy – which are essential for that research to happen. The CRSF underpins charity investment in universities across England however it has seen a significant decrease in real terms over recent years.

At the ICR, we have the greatest relative proportion of CRSF-eligible income of any UK higher education provider. As a postgraduate institution, we do not have undergraduate students and we are therefore unable to cross subsidise the deficits from our research using income from undergraduate students, like other institutions do. The combination of these two factors mean that we are uniquely affected by the declining value of the CRSF. In fact, in 2022-2023, for research activity funded by UK charities, we recovered less than 60 per cent of the ‘full economic costs’ for our research activities which translated to a deficit of almost £30m. 

Specialist provider element (SPE) funding, provided by Research England, is awarded to a small number of specialist institutions, such as the ICR, in recognition of their excellence and global reach. This vital funding recognises the unique benefits smaller, specialist institutions bring to the UK from their world-leading research and the translation of their research into economic and societal impact, while acknowledging the challenges they face.

Our ask: Government should work with Research England to urgently uplift CRSF, so that English universities and research institutions can continue to conduct world-class cancer research in a sustainable manner, whilst also prioritising an increase in SPE funding to sustain the academic excellence of specialist institutions.

Our ask: Government should work with Research England to urgently uplift CRSF, so that English universities and research institutions can continue to conduct world-class cancer research in a sustainable manner, whilst also prioritising an increase in SPE funding to sustain the academic excellence of specialist institutions.