How we fund research

Public funding for research in English higher education is administered under a 'dual support' system.

Under this system we provide block grant funding for institutions to support the research infrastructure and enable ground-breaking research in keeping with their own mission.

The Research Councils, charities, the European Union and government departments provide grants for specific research projects and programmes.

Note on QR data

Annual quality-related (QR) funding data is now available in our Data and statistics section.

Alternatively the same data is available under 'Funds for research' with the rest of our annual funding allocations.

HEFCE research funding 2013-14

In 2013-14 we will distribute £1.6 billion quality-related research (QR) funding. This breaks down into the following elements:

£1,018 million for mainstream QR
£32 million for London weighting on mainstream QR
£240 million for the RDP supervision fund
£198 million for the charity support element
£64 million for the business research element
£6 million for National Research Libraries.

Full details of these figures, and the annual quality-related research funding data are published as part of our annual funding allocations.

How we allocate research funds

We distribute the majority of our funds for research on the basis of research quality, and take into account the volume and relative cost of research in different areas.

This is called mainstream quality-related research funding.

Securing world-class research

Produced in collaboration with Universities UK and the other UK funding bodies, our publication 'Securing world-class research in UK universities: Exploring the impact of block grant funding' illustrates the wide variety of ways in which universities use this funding.

It highlights how QR funding underpins the most productive and efficient publicly funded research system in the G8 and enables the UK to continue to compete and thrive on the world stage.

Please note that the following amendment was made in November 2009:
name corrected for Goldsmiths, University of London.