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The future of the Nuclear Structure Facility at Daresbury, in Cheshire,
is in doubt again following a dispute between the NSF’s paymaster, the Science
and Engineering Research Council, and the SERC’s own funding body, the Advisory
Board for the Research Councils. Mark Richmond, chairman of the SERC, says
the rules the ABRC has laid down for dividing the science budget between
research councils has ‘put the NSF in additional jeopardy’.

Last month the NSF appeared to have won a reprieve when the SERC agreed
to fund it for the coming financial year. Richmond said the NSF would also
be funded the following year, 1992/93, even though the money was not in
his council’s budget. ‘In 1992/93 we have to find Pounds sterling 5 million
either to keep it running or to close it and it is that money that we do
not have,’ he said. He planned to put in an extra bid for money for the
NSF from the ABRC’s reserves. But Richmond’s plan to leave the pounds sterling
5 million out of his budget is not allowed under rules drawn up by the ABRC’s
chairman, David Phillips. He has told research councils that they must balance
their budgets without relying on the reserves.

The SERC has already cut funding for new research grants by a half for
next year, despite its wish to increase grants. Now it faces having to make
more cuts in the following year to pay for the NSF.

Richmond says the underlying problem is that it costs as much to close
a centre as it does to keep it open, because of the expense of redundancies.
‘You are driven inexorably to cut the only thing you can in the short term
– grants and studentships,’ he said.

Richmond would prefer Phillips to allow research councils to bid for
extra cash to cover the cost of closures. This would ease short-term problems
facing the SERC but would reduce the ABRC’s scope to pay for new research.
‘It is a struggle between us as to whether he minimises his freedom or I
minimise mine,’ says Richmond. Bill Gelletley, head of the NSF, said last
week: ‘We don’t feel secure either about money for next year or the following
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