Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council Meets With Its "Constituents" Without Bloodshed. (July 10, 2008)

 Last week at the Royal Society of London Richard Wade, the chief operating officer of Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) held the first public meeting to discuss the plan for dealing with a gaping hole in the government's allocation for astronomy, nuclear- and high-energy physics.

In December last year, the STFC announced an £80 million (A$165 million) cut to both budgets as well as cancelling involvement in international programmes in order to accommodate a restricted STFC budget for 2008–2011.

Overall there appears to be, according to Nature, a grudging acceptance of the new plan. Michael Rowan-Robinson, an astronomer at Imperial College, London says: "It seems to me that the STFC has listened to the community in many ways, [but the cuts] damaged morale, especially among young researchers".

In response to the boilover expert panels were set up to transparently review some 1,400 responses.

While the resulting plan is broadly similar to the initial plan there are nevertheless important if minor alternations.

• £1 million will set aside for research and development into something similar to the International Linear Collider, and £10 million a year for advanced accelerators, but the UK will pullout of the ILC.

• STFC will continue UK involvement with the Gemini telescope by attempting to sell observing time to other countries.

• STFC promised to try to fund priorities from the community, such as the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan, and e-MERLIN, a radio-astronomy network run by Jodrell Bank in Manchester.

On the other hand:

• To make up for funding increases, cuts have to be made elsewhere. The United Kingdom's participation in the BaBar particle-physics experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California will be ended.

• Also to be axed will be Britain's involvement in the Integral spacecraft — a gamma-ray spotting satellite observatory.

Overall you might think with a friend like the STFC what would an adversary be like.

According to Nature: "Astronomy grants are still facing a roughly 25% cut over the full spending period, and some high-energy physics grants look likely to end soon. Nuclear physicists are also concerned because the plan shifts money from their grants to finance large facilities."

And when it came to detailing just where the funding axe would fall Susan Cooper, a high-energy physicist at the University of Oxford was plain spoken: "What I wanted was clarity, without knowing, it is very hard to plan."

 Nuclear physicist William Gelletly from the University of Surrey said simply: "The U.K. should be playing a leading role instead of hanging on to the coattails of others."

And there was the damning through faint praise. Ken Peach, a high-energy physicist at the University of Oxford said: "Things look somewhat better than they did three to four months ago. But there are casualties."