Research England gets its annual guidance letter

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has delivered its annual guidance to Research England – and it fits on just one page.

Government guidance letters to the funder have been diminishing in size over recent years, and this year’s one appears to be the shortest yet. Research England is instructed to progress its review of strategic institutional research funding (known as the SIRF review) and deliver the previously announced transparency programme pilot, which is intended to improve the available evidence for how SIRF is used within those institutions in receipt of funds.

Again in reference to previously announced work, the funder is told to prioritise maintenance and upkeep in its research capital funding, and ensure that HEIF-funded activity has a “clear theory of how it contributes to national or regional growth.”

The guidance also calls on Research England to ensure that all of its funding and policies, including the Research Excellence Framework, support the ambitions of the post-16 white paper around specialisation and collaboration.

The recurrent grant for research and knowledge exchange in financial year 2026–27 will be just over £2.2bn, topped up with a contribution to HEIF from the Office for Students of £48.2m. Research England has also published its funding budgets for the coming academic year – total QR rises from £1.987bn to £2.024bn, and total HEIF funding rises from £280bn to £284bn.

For both QR and HEIF the portions funded by DSIT see a 1.88 per cent increase. This contrasts with UKRI’s budget commitments back in December 2025, which promised to grow both “in line with expected inflation over the spending review period.”