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The chancellor announced the Government's spending plans in November, including a £75 million investment in the University's Cavendish Laboratories.

The following is a summary of the key points from the Comprehensive Spending Review affecting the University and the higher education sector.

Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratories

  • On top of the £6.9bn science capital commitment, £75 million will be invested by the Government in order to transform the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratories. The project will be to the benefit of related research across the UK.

Science budget

  • Science resource funding (c.£4.7bn) will be protected in real terms over the course of the Parliament. Public science resource expenditure will therefore be over £500m higher by 2019-20 compared to 2015-16. This spending includes a new “Global Challenges Fund” of £1.5bn.
  • The Government commits to funding aerospace and automotive technologies for a decade; this will mean an additional £1bn in funding for innovation in these areas.
  • The Government will deliver its long term science capital commitment of £6.9bn between 2015-21. This includes £150m (capital and resource) to be made available for a “competition” for a Dementia Institute.

Research

  • The recommendations of Sir Paul Nurse’s Review will be implemented. In practice this is likely to mean the establishment of “Research UK” which will “work across the seven Research Councils” and be headed by one chief Accounting Officer.
  • The Nurse Review also recommends the creation of a Ministerial Committee to facilitate “strategic discussions” between the research community and policy-makers regarding the direction of public science funding.
  • A further recommendation is the establishment of a “Common Research Fund” to support interdisciplinary research and research proposals “to address cross-cutting societal needs”.
  • The Government will “take forward” a review of the Research Excellence Framework to ascertain “how to simplifying and strengthen funding on the basis of excellence, and will set out further details shortly”.

Teaching grant

  • The teaching grant will be reduced by £120m in cash terms by 2019-20.
  • Funding for high cost subjects will be protected in real terms.
  • HEFCE will be tasked with retargeting and reducing the student opportunity fund, “focusing funding on institutions with the most effective outcomes”.

Student finance

  • Maintenance loans will be available for part-time HE students and new loans introduced for postgraduate Master’s degrees.
  • Tuition fee loans will be available for higher level skills in Further Education.
  • Loan repayment threshold for Plan 2 borrowers will be frozen until April 2021.
  • For all STEM subjects, tuition loans will be extended to students wishing to do a second degree from 2017-18.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' (BIS) Budget

  • The Departmental budget will be cut by 17% over the course of the Parliament. This brings BIS’s resource departmental expenditure limit down from £12.9bn in 2015/16 to £11.5bn in 2019-20.
  • The conversion of Higher Education maintenance grants into loans, announced in the July 2015 budget, will be counted towards these savings.
  • The number of students attending university will remain uncapped.

Business and innovation support

  • ‘New finance products’ will replace some existing Innovate UK grants, and reach £165m per year by the end of the parliament, in order to maintain Innovate UK support in cash terms.
  • Innovate UK will likely be absorbed into Research UK, the new ‘formal organisation’ advocated by Sir Paul Nurse to represent the seven Research Councils.

Other areas:

Devolution to local government

  • Directly elected mayors will be allowed to introduce a premium to business rates to fund new infrastructure, provided they have the support of the local business community to do so.
  • The power to cut the business rate will be devolved to local authorities, who will be able to retain 100% of business rates revenue.
  • The local government grant will be gradually phased out.
  • The Government will deliver its commitment to a £12bn Local Growth Fund between 2015-16 and 2020-21.  This will put money under the direct control of business-led Local Enterprise Partnerships.
  • The Government intends to negotiate further ‘devolution deals’ with major city regions, building on from the settlement with Greater Manchester. The creation of directly elected mayors and devolution of major budgets and responsibilities to local areas will be a main focus of these deals.

Schools funding

  • A national funding formula will be introduced so that funding is ‘transparently and fairly linked to children’s needs’. The new formula will be implemented from 2017-18, subject to a consultation in 2016.

Published

26 November 2015

Image

The Cavendish Laboratory