STFC update to science community on consultation process

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you to keep you informed on the consultation process that we have put in place to prioritise our programme for 2010/11 and beyond.

As I am sure you have heard, our budget for 2009/10 is now final and STFC has been given a near cash allocation of £490.7M. This is made up of the baseline allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 (CSR07) with the addition of a previously agreed “loan” (a reprofiling of our allocation within the CSR) of £20M and compensation for exchange rate movements. This figure does not include the capital budget, which is in addition to the £490.7M.

At the end of April, Council agreed in principle a plan on how we can manage the budget for the 2009/10 fiscal year. This will require that we make some internal savings (cuts to programme support, travel, administration, further restrictions on recruitment etc), reductions in facility operations, and slippages to programmes which can be engineered without serious long-term impact to the programme. We are also looking at the possibility of bringing forward the already planned cessation of operations of some of the lower priority items identified in the 2008 Programmatic Review.

Our intention is not to close out options for the highest priority programmes in the future, and to avoid making major strategic decisions in advance of consultation and inputs from the advisory panels and from the review of ground-based astronomy facilities.

For 2010/11 onwards, we must assume at least equal pressure on our assumed allocation and we aim to develop an understanding of how to address this on the timescale of October 2009.

The new advisory panels that we have set up have been tasked to identify the highest strategic priorities in their area, the big science questions over the next 20-30 years, the facilities/technologies that the UK currently has (or has access to) and the facilities and technologies needed to address the identified science questions.

We have asked the panels to give us clear input on the priorities and we would expect that they will consult widely with their community in preparing this input, to help us develop our future programme. We expect that the advice from the advisory panels will be presented to PPAN and PALS in the autumn. On the same timescale, we anticipate input from the review of ground-based astronomy facilities and from the international review of our facilities for physical and life sciences.

It is also possible that we may need to come to the community with specific questions in the next few months and if we (working with PPAN or PALS) decide that we need additional information about certain projects or activities, we will liaise with the advisory panels to prevent duplication, our aim being to work through the advisory panels and review as much as possible.

This will not be a simple or easy process and it is important that your views are fed into the advisory panels and reviews.

Thank you for your help.

John Womersley
Director, Science Programmes
Science and Technology Facilities Council