Proposed staff cuts at some of the UK’s leading science departments should prompt ministers to reconsider whether the future of subjects key to industrial strategy ambitions are left to the markets, experts have said.
With the universities of Sheffield and Nottingham recently announcing staff cuts in their acclaimed chemistry departments – both ranked in the UK’s top 20 in the last Research Excellence Framework – concerns have been raised about how this could affect the skills pipeline to industries such as clean energy and life sciences which, in September 2025, were earmarked as high-growth priority areas by Labour.
There are also plans to cut about a third of staff in Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy, while Sheffield’s materials science and engineering department is slated to axe about one in five posts.
With research-intensive Russell Group universities seeking cuts in departments relevant to growth sectors, ministers should reflect on how these changes might affect their policy agenda, in particular, Keir Starmer’s flagship “Plan for Change”, launched in December 2024, said Graeme Reid, chair of science and research policy at UCL.
“The growth mission is the most senior mission of this government and, in the very first sentence of that Plan for Change, the UK’s ‘world-class universities and researchers and world-class talent’ are mentioned as the ‘fundamentals’ of the UK economy,” said Reid, a former senior civil servant in the Department for Business and the Treasury.
