Britain’s scientific capabilities face “serious damage” with some national facilities at risk of closure under spending cuts that are being considered to meet spiralling costs at the government’s infrastructure funding agency.
The concern surrounds sites funded and operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), including the Diamond Light Source and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in Oxfordshire and other national facilities at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire.
All are world-leading centres that serve hundreds of companies and thousands of scientists in the UK and abroad.
Managers have been asked to find substantial savings after cost overruns that arose through soaring electricity and staff costs and high foreign exchange rates for international collaborations, such as the Cern nuclear research laboratory near Geneva.
Scientists said Diamond and ISIS were proposing to cut between 10% and 20% of their annual spend to help the STFC save at least £162m by 2029-30. The STFC aims to make most of the savings internally, but some cuts are falling on research grants, a move Brian Cox, the TV physicist and professor at the University of Manchester, described as the “destruction of the future”.
Tom Grinyer, the chief executive at the Institute of Physics, urged the government to “properly think through any reduction, fully consult the research community and slow down these once-in-a-generation changes to funding” or “risk doing serious damage to the UK’s scientific capability and international attractiveness”.
He added: “Facilities like the Diamond Light Source and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source are a crucial part of the UK’s innovation and research infrastructure. These places are vital to the scientific life of the nation and we have to back them – short term decisions taken now could have consequences that may be felt for decades.”
In a letter to researchers in April, the STFC’s executive chair, Prof Michele Dougherty, and the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation, Prof Ian Chapman, said it was “unavoidable that some impacts will be felt across the portfolio”.
The Diamond Light Source works like a giant microscope and produces beams of light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. The light is directed into beamlines fitted with instruments that allow researchers to study materials as varied as the Covid virus to the Herculaneum scrolls in unprecedented detail.
Scientists are bracing for cost savings of about 20% at Diamond, where reductions are expected to hit the planned Diamond-II upgrade. In 2023, the previous executive chair of the STFC, Prof Mark Thomson, now director general at Cern, said Diamond-II would play a “crucial role in cementing the UK’s place as a science superpower”.
The ISIS facility uses neutrons and more exotic subatomic particles called muons to explore how materials work. It is used by thousands of scientists and engineers to study pharmaceuticals, batteries, solar cells, hydrogen storage materials and components for trains, planes and automobiles. The facility has been running at 80% capacity for the past two years because of existing cost pressures and has lost 10% of staff, most of whom have not been replaced.
“What is unique about neutron scattering is the breadth of the community it supports, spanning physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering and industry,” said Dr Lucy Clark, an associate professor of materials chemistry at the University of Birmingham and the chair of the UK Neutron Scattering Group.
“Different instruments provide different scientific capabilities, enabling entirely different areas of research. If particular instruments were no longer available, the consequence would not simply be fewer experiments – it would mean losing capability for whole sections of the research community.”
Dr Andrew McCluskey, a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, who uses the Diamond Light Source and the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, said the breadth of science conducted at the facilities was “wild”.
He said: “If ISIS or Diamond close beamlines, which are specialised in a particular area of science, what happens in two, three or five years’ time when it turns out that technique is the thing we need to solve the next crisis that we’re facing?”
Prof John Womersley, a former chief executive of the STFC, said the closure of a facility was possible. “It’s certainly on the table, because the scale of budget crisis is hard to address with a salami-slicing approach,” he said. “It’s a tough decision for that one area, but it enables you to maintain the quality of activity in all the other areas.”
The problem, he said, is that if a facility is shut down because of salaries and electricity costs it creates an international impression about the UK’s attitude to big science facilities, which could take years to repair. “It seems like you’re selling your second home because the price of milk has gone up,” he said.
When asked if any STFC facilities would close or be mothballed, an STFC spokesperson said: “No decisions have been made about any area of the work of STFC at this time.
“The prioritisation exercise STFC is currently undertaking across all areas of our work is looking at where we can make efficiencies in the running of STFC to make us financially sustainable. The exercise is still ongoing and decisions should be shared in the autumn.”
