Business R&D spending is growing, but real-terms growth is slower than the headline suggests
Is British business investing in research and development? Total spend, who funds it, and which broad industries perform it — every figure traced to ONS's Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) statistics.
£55,615m
UK business R&D expenditure, current prices, 2024
£55,615m
Same, Constant prices, 2024 reference year (ONS R&D deflator), 2024
UK business R&D expenditure (current prices)
UK business R&D spending has grown steadily in current-price terms — the real-terms chart below shows how much of that is genuine growth versus inflation.
View data table
| Year | UK business R&D expenditure (current prices) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 40993 |
| 2019 | 42184 |
| 2020 | 43995 |
| 2021 | 46929 |
| 2022 | 50841 |
| 2023 | 53195 |
| 2024 | 55615 |
United Kingdom · Source: Office for National Statistics, Business enterprise research and development, UK (Accredited Official Statistics) · series Table 1a — Current prices (£ millions) · as of 2024
UK business R&D expenditure (constant 2024 prices)
Adjusted for R&D-specific inflation, growth has been slower and less consistent than the current-price figure alone suggests.
View data table
| Year | UK business R&D expenditure (constant 2024 prices) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 49759 |
| 2019 | 50658 |
| 2020 | 52653 |
| 2021 | 55788 |
| 2022 | 54440 |
| 2023 | 54354 |
| 2024 | 55615 |
United Kingdom · Source: Office for National Statistics, Business enterprise research and development, UK (Accredited Official Statistics) · series Table 1a — Constant prices (2024) (£ millions) · as of 2024
Who funds business R&D?
R&D expenditure by funder, UK
The large majority of business R&D is funded from businesses' own funds; overseas funding is a meaningful and growing second source, government funding a smaller third.
View data table
| Year | Own funds | UK government | Overseas | Other UK businesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 40400 | 2971 | 6307 | 1041 |
| 2023 | 41406 | 3573 | 7266 | 842 |
| 2024 | 42415 | 3773 | 8352 | 922 |
United Kingdom · Source: Office for National Statistics, Business enterprise research and development, UK (designated as Official Statistics) · as of 2024
Manufacturing versus services
R&D expenditure by broad industry, UK
Manufacturing and services perform broadly comparable amounts of business R&D — a reminder that UK innovation spending is not solely a factory-floor story.
View data table
| Year | Manufacturing | Services |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 24226 | 23748 |
| 2023 | 25980 | 24452 |
| 2024 | 27280 | 25548 |
United Kingdom · Source: Office for National Statistics, Business enterprise research and development, UK (designated as Official Statistics) · as of 2024
How this is calculated, and what "evidence class" means
- A — Observed official statistic — the two total-expenditure series (current price and real terms), ONS's headline Accredited Official Statistics release.
- B — Official/admin statistic with methodological limitations — the funder and industry breakdowns, published in ONS's separate (non-accredited) BERD dataset.
ONS discontinued the BERD Timeseries API dataset in 2021 (frozen since, no longer updated) — figures on this page come from ONS's two current XLSX releases instead. The funder and industry breakdowns are shown only from 2022 onward because ONS itself states 2022-2024 figures follow a new sampling methodology and "are not directly comparable with previous years, with the exception of the UK totals" — which is why the two total-expenditure series above run a longer history than the breakdowns. R&D as a share of GDP is not shown: ONS's own directly-published ratio is one of the discontinued time-series codes, and computing one from mismatched sources was judged not worth the risk of a misleading ratio — a real, documented gap, not an oversight. Regional and R&D-employment breakdowns exist in the same source but are not yet shown on this page.
Research spending also needs usable infrastructure
The NAO found clearer priorities and stronger investment cases, but warned that maintenance, renewal and early project optimism still need attention. Spending totals do not establish whether facilities are usable or projects deliver value. NAO review, 13 March 2026.