Can commercial funding fill a £42 million (US$56 million) a year hole in the finances of some of the UK’s most iconic laboratories and science facilities?

That is the challenge facing sites run by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds the Diamond Light Source (the national synchrotron facility at Harwell) as well as other scientific instruments and laboratories.

The UK government has said all STFC-funded sites must raise money to cover more of their own running costs, or risk being closed.

The reshuffle comes amid a review of public funding of research in the UK, in line with the government’s strategic priorities, and during a difficult period for UK science. The country’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has merged the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology into a larger Department of Business, Innovation, Science and Commerce. Patrick Vallance, a clinical scientist popular with research leaders, resigned as science minister on July 20. Chemical engineer Chris McDonald, a member of the UK parliament who had a previous career in industrial research, was appointed to the role on July 24.

Nature It analyzes where the cuts come from, how facilities in other countries generate income and whether it is feasible to make up the shortfall in this way.

Why are there cuts when UK science is promised a record budget?

The Labor government, led by former prime minister Keir Starmer until July 20, promised that the budget of the country’s biggest research funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), would grow from £8.8 billion in 2025-26 to £10 billion in 2029-30. But under this plan, money for “curiosity-driven research” (that is, primarily that conducted by individual researchers through grants) would remain more or less stable. By contrast, spending on strategic government priorities such as artificial intelligence, business support, and investment in talent and infrastructure, including IT resources, would receive the lion’s share of the increase. AI is set to raise more than £1.6bn over four years.

It is necessary to correct the financing of science, but not through chaotic reforms

Under these plans, the STFC’s core budget will remain stable. STFC says cuts will be required elsewhere to free up funds for the rising costs of grants for postdoctoral researchers and the costs of membership fees for international organizations such as the European particle physics laboratory CERN.

Diamond and its neighbors, the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and the Central Laser Facility (CLF), both also in Harwell, will fall by 15% (or £28 million a year) by 2030.

In addition, STFC spending on national laboratories and properties (covering sites such as Daresbury Laboratory, a campus near Warrington working in fields ranging from nuclear physics to supercomputing, and RAL Space, the national space laboratory, also in Harwell) will fall by 8% (£14 million a year) by 2030. Some laboratories will be hit harder than others. For example, over the same period, annual funding will be reduced by 40% for the Boulby Underground Laboratory, which is located 1.1 kilometers from a salt mine near Whitby and is used for quantum and dark matter research.

How are these labs supposed to make up the shortfall?

UKRI has given the STFC a one-off injection of £135 million over three years to allow the facilities to remain open long enough to achieve cost savings and additional revenue to cover any shortfalls.

According to the STFC, sites should eliminate user support and technical support, for example. Ian Chapman, chief executive of UKRI, told reporters at a briefing on July 9 that the amount of time ISIS beams will be operating will fall from 80% to 66%. He also confirmed that jobs will be cut across the STFC. STFC staff numbers have risen dramatically since 2021 to around 3,000 people, and he said the council was “expecting some staff reductions, and it will probably be in the hundreds”.

At the same time, facilities are asked to generate external income through industrial activity. Many already do it. Sites like Diamond and ISIS charge companies to use their tools for proprietary research, but there is no payment under certain conditions, such as for research that will be published.

ISIS, for example, has an instrument called ChipIr, which generates high-energy neutrons that simulate those in space, and is used by the aviation industry to test how particles alter materials and electronics. Facilities can also sell the technology they develop, such as new types of detectors, or charge for access to lab space, such as Boulby’s unique low-noise environment.

Can UK facilities learn from their counterparts in Europe?

Chapman said at the July 9 briefing that staff at STFC sites have relatively little experience generating revenue from outside sources, but there is no resistance to the idea.

Comparing business activity between facilities is difficult as each accounts for industry revenue differently. UKRI’s annual report says the STFC received £29 million in income in 2025-26 from facilities, goods and services, representing around 3.5% of the STFC’s annual budget. This proportion is slightly less than the around 5% that the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), a neutron beam facility in Grenoble, France, generates from the industry by selling beam time and generating radioactive isotopes used in medicine, according to Mark Johnson, head of partnerships at the ILL.

Is UK science at risk? Huge financing reforms cause chaos and anxiety

Other European facilities, however, earn even more. The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland, a research laboratory that also houses a number of large scientific facilities, including The institute has had industry collaboration from the beginning, he says, and has a dedicated X-ray line to be used by pharmaceutical companies to perform protein crystallography.