A National Audit Office report has found that UK Research
and Innovation (UKRI) and the Department for Business, Energy
& Industrial Strategy (BEIS) have worked well to generate
interest from industry and academia in the Industrial Strategy
Challenge Fund (the Fund). However, more needs to be done to
reduce the time taken to consider requests for support, so
applicants are not deterred from bidding for funding and projects
are not delayed.
One of the ways BEIS aims to deliver the UK's Industrial
Strategy is by promoting investment in science, research and
innovation. The Fund - the responsibility of UKRI - supports the
Industrial Strategy's objective to raise long-term productivity
and living standards by supporting four ‘grand challenges'
(future mobility; clean growth; artificial intelligence and data;
and the ageing society).
UKRI invites bids from business and academia to identify
important ‘challenges' faced by the UK that might merit financial
support from the Fund. Once a challenge is approved by ministers,
organisations are invited to bid for projects that will
contribute to that challenge. Current challenges range from
supporting the UK's development of low carbon technologies, to
supporting the better detection of disease and the mass
production of vaccines.
By January 2021 the Fund was supporting 1,613 projects,
contributing to one of the 24 approved challenges. To date, UKRI
has spent around £1.2 billion of the Fund's eight-year budget of
£3 billion.
This report examines whether the Fund has been
set up in a way likely to deliver value for taxpayers. It
examines:
-
the establishment of the fund, in particular
whether it has attracted sufficient good quality bids, whether
the selection processes have been efficient and whether the
budget has been managed effectively; and
-
the approach to monitoring and evaluating
the Fund's performance, and its performance to date.
