Review of the dual support transfer : final report, November 1995 / Office of Science and Technology.

  • Great Britain. Office of Science and Technology
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Review of the dual support transfer : final report, November 1995 / Office of Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I Introduction Background to the dual support transfer 1 The support of academic research in UK universities is based on the notion of dual support. Universities receive public funds for research both through institutional funding from the Higher Education Funding Councils and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland - (DENI) and specific project grants from research councils. Prior to August 1992 the Universities Funding Council (UFC) funds provided for the costs of the basic infrastructure for university research, such as laboratories and equipment, as well as academic staff - the well found laboratory. This also enabled universities to undertake seedcorn research at their own discretion. There was no equivalent funding for polytechnics and colleges. The research council side of the dual support system covered the specific direct costs (or marginal costs) associated with individual research projects. Projects were (and still are) distributed on a competitive basis for which all higher education institutions could apply. 2 The UFC provided teaching and research funds to institutions by way of a block grant calculated on the basis of various formulae. One of these formulae took into account the number and value of project grants awarded by research councils and other research funders, this element of the UFC grant was known as DR. The level of DR awarded to an institution, was linked to success in securing research council and charitable grant funding. Despite popular belief, the DR amount was never intended to represent the actual infrastructure costs associated with supporting these grants, it was simply a means of determining the allocation of one component of the block grant for teaching and research. 5 During the 1980s there was a growing concern that the dividing line between the respective funding responsibilities of the research councils and the universities had become confused. In the absence of an exact definition of funding responsibilities, the system depended on there being a common understanding of what was meant by the well found laboratory. This understanding was breaking down both across the research councils and between research councils and the funding councils. In addition there was a fairly widespread belief that DR was intended as the underpinning support for research council and charity grants, even after it was stated that success in obtaining such grants merely informed decisions about DR allocations. 4 The dual support transfer, which took effect from August 1992, involved the redefinition of responsibilities for meeting costs associated with research projects. Essentially the research councils assumed responsibility for funding more of the costs associated with projects than they had funded hitherto. In particular, the then Secretary of State for Education and Science decided that research councils should be responsible for funding all the direct costs (other than the costs of permanent academic staff) associated with the projects which they fund and that they should also fund some of the indirect costs. It would remain the responsibility of the institution receiving the grant to meet the following costs:
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