Research Councils UK, sometimes known as RCUK, was a non-departmental public body[1] that coordinated science policy in the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2018.

The councils receive public funds from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and each reports annually to the British Parliament.

Most funding is allocated competitively and few awards last more than ten years, which allows the Councils to vary capacity to meet changing priorities and challenges.

[6] In 2007 the government raised the status of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to become, in effect, a research council for industry.

This trend continued in the 19th century with the creation of the British Geological Survey in 1832, and the allocation of funds in 1850 to the Royal Society to award individual grants.

By the First World War in 1915, claims about the poor state of British manufacturing compared to Germany's led to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR).

It was a part of government, staffed by civil servants who distributed grants, operated laboratories, and made policy.

Examples included the Radio Research Station, established in Ditton Park in 1924, which later became the Appleton Laboratory.

[8] To respond to this growth, in 1963 Sir Burke Trend chaired the Committee of Enquiry into the Organisation of Civil Science.

In 1983 the ARC also changed its focus to outputs rather than methods to become the Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC).

Given a lack of control over exchange rate fluctuations and the need to meet long-term commitments, cuts regularly fell on the short-term grants, thereby alienating the research community.

In 1994 SERC finally split into the EPSRC and PPARC to further separate innovation-orientated engineering from pure research into particle physics and astronomy.