Members invited to contribute to ARMA Response to Government Proposal for a new UK Research Funding Agency

Complete the survey by Monday 22 June

In December 2019, The Queen’s Speech set out the Government’s intention for:

a new approach to funding emerging fields of research and technology. It will provide long term funding to support visionary high-risk, high-pay off scientific, engineering, and technology ideas

This would be “broadly modelled” on the US ARPA. The US Government’s ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ (DARPA), which evolved from ARPA, employs ‘programme managers’ on 3–5 year contracts to fund high-risk, high-reward research. Its budget in financial year 2019–20 was approximately £2.65bn.

The March 2020 Budget stated that the Government would “invest at least £800 million” in this “blue skies” funding agency, which would fund “high risk, high reward science”.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has now launched a consultation exercise and ARMA is considering submitting a response on behalf of our research professional community.

We are going to focus on the following questions in our response, ensuring that we represent our community as a whole:

What gaps in the current UK research and development system might be addressed by an ARPA style approach?

What are the implications of the new funding agency for existing funding bodies and their approach?

What funding should ARPA receive, and how should it distribute this funding to maximise effectiveness?

What can be learned from ARPA equivalents in other countries?

If you would like to contribute to ARMA’s response, you can do this by completing our surveymonkey before 9am Monday 22 June. Click here to complete.

We hope you will want to get involved in this consultation exercise and we look forward to hearing from you.