NewsBreakingOnline

Equipment shortages predicted as government pulls funding for four projects considered priorities by research councils Scientists will be forced to share laboratories and find extra money to buy basic equipment as funding cuts hit British research, the Guardian has learned. Senior academics said savage cuts to hardware and facilities budgets would transform scientific research in the UK, with top-end equipment concentrated ever more in elite universities and government centres, and other researchers striking deals to get access to the facilities. The greatest difficulties are expected at cash-strapped, middle-ranking universities, where research and teaching are in danger of decline because there is too little money to replace ageing and broken lab equipment. The full impact of the cuts emerged as the science minister, David Willetts, said the government would not fund four major science projects highlighted as a priority by research councils. They include a national supercomputing service for developing drugs and modelling climate change; an international computer science centre at the Daresbury research and innovation campus in Cheshire; redevelopment of the Institute for Animal Health; and upgrades to facilities at the Rothera research station in Antarctica. The government cut capital budgets at research councils by half last year, a move that will see spending on science infrastructure fall by several hundred million pounds over four years. Universities hope to recoup the costs for some teaching equipment from tuition fees, but are under pressure to form consortiums to share more specialised research tools. Christopher Snowden, the vice chancellor of Surrey University, said the cuts would have a “profound” impact on universities at a time when teaching grants and research funding were under extreme pressure. In evidence given to the Commons science and technology committee, the Royal Astronomical Society warned that bids for small-scale lab equipment and computers were “likely to be seriously affected by the planned cuts”. The committee is expected to criticise the cuts in a report on astronomy and particle physics to be published on Friday. The Medical Research Council has urged scientists to share equipment more, including its PET brain scanner facility at Imperial College, and four high-throughput gene sequencing centres in Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and Edinburgh. From this month, scientists can apply for only half the cost of lab equipment valued at between £10,000 and £121,588, and must find the rest of the money from other sources. Research councils can choose to cover the full cost of more expensive equipment but will decide where any facilities are based. Researchers fear the shortfall in funds will hamper research as universities struggle to maintain their own equipment and major facilities face extra demand. Mark Downs, the chief executive of the Society of Biology, said: “Capital expenditure is essential for research. Without it we will fail to get the most out of the money spent on the rest of research. Critically it is also the budget for maintenance of expensive equipment. Cutting the budget by half makes no sense. The research councils largely have their hands tied but government must revisit this critical area.” Universities already share equipment, but at many sites time on facilities is over-subscribed. One researcher in London said smaller research groups would band together to bid for equipment but feared ending up in “unequal partnerships”. The eight research-intensive universities in the north of England, including Manchester, Durham and Sheffield, are meeting on Thursday to discuss the sharing of equipment such as microscopes and imaging instruments. A similar strategy has been adopted by chemistry departments in Scotland, which operate an east coast consortium dominated by Edinburgh and St Andrews, and a west coast collaboration centring on Strathclyde and Glasgow. Similar consortiums may be harder to set up in parts of England, including East Anglia and the west country, where research groups are more dispersed. David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry and emeritus professor at Imperial College, said more sharing would undoubtedly cause tension within the scientific community. “All the equipment we have is fully used by our own people. If we are then being asked to provide a service for other departments elsewhere, that is going to put a lot of pressure on. It means having to ration the time available to existing users and that will cause some friction,” he said. “The difficulty for even successful departments is that equipment has a finite lifetime. You might be able to keep going with facilities that are five years old, but if they are a decade old, you are out of date. If there is a 50% cut in funding to replace that equipment, people in the UK are going to miss out. “The inevitable outcome is going to be fewer research departments in the UK. There is a lot of pressure on smaller departments who will see their income under threat, and there comes a point where you have to ask whether they will be viable,” he added. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, whose capital budget will fall from £49m in 2010/11 to 25m in 2013/14, said it would reform equipment sharing and might pull out of some facilities to better fund leading centres. “Inevitably there will be some groups who had certain facilities in their labs or on their doorsteps that won’t any more,” said John Fisher, deputy vice-chancellor at Leeds University. “It will be different, but we have to work smarter and more strategically as a country.” The Natural Environment Research Council, a major funder of environmental research, has ringfenced money for three major projects: the Halley Antarctic base, a replacement for the research ship, Discovery, and building work at its Keyworth site. “Aside from these projects, it will be very difficult to support new capital projects in the coming years unless additional funds can be secured,” a spokeswoman said. The extent of the cuts has drawn protests from physicists involved with long-term projects, such as the European Extra-Large Telescope, an observatory to be based in Chile. The Institute of Physics said the lack of capital funds undermined planning and was likely to affect the UK’s ability to take a leading role in the telescope project. The Science and Technology Facilities Council, which funds physics and astronomy, already plans to withdraw from telescopes in the northern hemisphere, a move that will have a damaging effect on UK groups hunting for Earth-like planets beyond our own solar system. Chi Onwurah, the shadow minister for innovation and science, said: “This government does not have a long-term plan to support British science. We are in danger of losing our world beating position in science because of this government’s policies. They claim to recognise the vital part science will play in rebalancing our economy, driving growth and creating jobs. But real terms cuts to research budgets and huge cuts to important capital projects tell a different story.” Science policy Research funding University funding Higher education Ian Sample guardian.co.uk