About the Science and Technology Facilities Council

The Science and Technology Facilities Council is an independent, non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS).

We were formed as a new Research Council on 1 April 2007 through a merger of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and the transfer of responsibility for nuclear physics from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). We are one of seven national research councils (link opens in a new window)| in the UK.

We are a science-driven organisation. We make it possible for a broad range of scientists to do the highest quality research tackling some of the most fundamental scientific questions.

We do this by:

• funding researchers in universities directly through grants particularly in astronomy, particle physics, space science and nuclear physics.
  
• providing in the UK access to world-class facilities, including ISIS, the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS which closed in 2008), the Central Laser Facility, and HPCx. We are also a major stakeholder in the Diamond Light Source, which is due to start operating this year.
  
• providing in the UK a broad range of scientific and technical expertise in space and ground-based astronomy technologies, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar.
  
• providing access to world-class facilities overseas, including through   European Organization for Nuclear Research (link opens in a new window) (CERN), the European Space Agency (link opens in a new window) (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (link opens in a new window) (ESO), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (link opens in a new window) (ESRF), the Institut Laue-Langevin (link opens in a new window) (ILL) and telescope facilities in Chile (link opens in a new window), Hawaii (link opens in a new window), La Palma (link opens in a new window), and Australia (link opens in a new window).
  

We supply highly skilled scientists and engineers and generate ideas and technologies that have a much broader social and economic impact.

We encourage researchers to create new businesses based on their discoveries and we help established companies to use the fruits of our research as the basis of new or improved products and services.

We have a budget of about £530m per annum and employ more than 2200 staff who are deployed at 7 locations. These locations are in Swindon, where the headquarters is based: the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory|, which is part of the Harwell Science and Innovation campus in Oxfordshire: the Daresbury Laboratory|, which is part of the Daresbury Science and Innovation campus in Cheshire: the Chilbolton Observatory| in Hampshire: the UK Astronomy Technology Centre| in Edinburgh: the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (link opens in a new window)| on La Palama in the Canary Islands; and the Joint Astronomy Centre (link opens in a new window)| in Hawaii.