Background to the report
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)
considers space to be a critical component to meeting wider
government goals, including levelling up and becoming a science
and technology superpower.
A UK Space Agency (UKSA) commissioned report estimates that the
total UK space industry income was £17.5 billion in 2020-21. The
space sector also directly provided an estimated 48,800 jobs
while supporting an additional 78,000 jobs across the supply
chain in 2020-21.
In September 2021, DSIT and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) jointly
published the government's National Space Strategy. It set an
ambition to make the UK one of the world's most innovative and
attractive space economies.
DSIT has been responsible for coordinating civil space policy and
UKSA has been the government's key delivery agency, responsible
for developing and delivering UK civil space programmes across
the UK space sector and with international space institutions.
Scope of the report
This report examines whether DSIT and UKSA are set to secure
value for money from their work overseeing and delivering the
National Space Strategy.
It covers:
- whether DSIT has clearly defined its objectives for the civil
space sector in the Strategy and is effectively overseeing and
coordinating its delivery
- UKSA's role and progress in delivering the Strategy, and the
extent to which it has the required capacity and capability
- whether there are appropriate mechanisms to monitor progress
against the Strategy and evaluate outcomes
Conclusion
The government did well to draw its many different interests and
activities in this very diverse sector into a single vision in
its 2021 national Strategy, which set high ambitions and helped
galvanise the sector's interest.
DSIT recognised that the original Strategy was broad and that it
did not know how much it would cost to deliver. However, it did
not produce the implementation plan that it had originally
planned to, and three years later DSIT and UKSA are still in the
early stages of identifying and developing the plans and
capabilities needed to deliver the Strategy's ambitions.
The government substantially increased the scale of UKSA's
funding and changed its delivery responsibilities in 2021, but
DSIT did not provide clarity on the aims, outcomes or priorities
for what UKSA was supposed to deliver and by when, or ensure that
UKSA had the capability or capacity to deliver it.
UKSA was proactive in working to align its activities with the
Strategy and identifying a need to make changes to its
organisational structure and governance but did not have
sufficient planning, monitoring or evaluation arrangements or
capabilities in place. As a result, its funding allocation
processes had some weaknesses, some of its projects are behind
schedule, and it does not have a complete view of whether it is
on course to deliver the government's ambitions.
UKSA has recognised many of these weaknesses and has been putting
in place arrangements to remedy them, including a revised
approach to allocating funding, and improved monitoring and
evaluation processes.
UKSA has recently seen notable improvements in its Civil Service
People Survey results. Similarly, it expects to report improved
performance against its planned milestones and to meet its
financial target of not having a material underspend for 2023-24.
However, UKSA recognises that it has more to do. The sector is
developing at a fast pace, and in planning for the future the
government will need to balance the need to provide certainty
with the need to be flexible and responsive to new opportunities.
If UKSA is able to address these issues and DSIT provides the
required clarity on the aims and outcomes of the Strategy, then
they will be much better placed to secure value for money from
the government's multi-billion pound investments in the sector
and achieve the government's ambitions for the UK in space.
