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Scientific Research Wins Fresh Funding

Science won £600m of the extra £5bn allocated by the chancellor for capital investment in infrastructure - the biggest single announcement of new research spending since the coalition government came to power.

The money will fund projects in fields including advanced materials, “big data” - the analysis of vast amounts of information - and energy storage. Details of the allocation are not yet known, although the government said one beneficiary would be the National Composites Centre at the Bristol and Bath Science Park, which will carry out training and research on new materials for the aerospace, automotive and renewable energy sectors.

Campaigners welcomed the funding. “We were hoping that the chancellor would continue his trend of supporting science and engineering and are really delighted with this new commitment - the total amount of new funding since 2010 has now reached almost £2bn,” said Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering.

Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said: “We have some way to go to match the public and private investment levels in research and development of some of our competitor economies but we have the advantage of already being truly world class in many areas of science.”