World-leading UK science facilities at risk amid £162m funding crisis

Experts have said the Diamond Light Source, operated by the STFC, is a crucial part of the UK’s innovation and research infrastructure. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Experts have said the Diamond Light Source, operated by the STFC, is a crucial part of the UK’s innovation and research infrastructure. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian World-leading UK science facilities at risk amid £162m funding crisis Diamond Light Source and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source face cuts of up to 20% as Science and Technology Facilities Council seeks savings 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 de