FOI_25-161 Defence or security research funding and partnerships
Date of response: 19 June 2025
We have considered your request of 23 May 2025 for the following information
Please provide the following information for the University of East Anglia for the past five financial years (2020/21 to 2024/25):
Question 1. Defence/Security Research Funding
Has the University of East Anglia received research grants or contracts from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), or other UK government defence or security agencies (such as DASA, NCSC, or the Home Office) in the past five financial years (2020/21–2024/25)?
Question 1.a. If yes, please provide:
- The total value of funding received.
- The names of the funding bodies and the departments or research groups involved.
- The typical duration of these grants or contracts.
- Whether any of these grants or contracts have funded PhD studentships, doctoral training programmes, or Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) in defence, security, or dual-use research.
If so, please specify the number of PhD students supported, the research groups involved, and the topics or themes funded.
Question 2. Defence Industry Partnerships
Does the University of East Anglia collaborate with defence primes (e.g., BAE Systems, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce), SMEs, or public sector organisations (e.g., UK Armed Forces, NATO) on defence or security research or innovation?
If yes, please provide:
- The names of partner organisations.
- Examples of projects or focus areas.
Question 3. Commercialisation Activity
In the past five financial years:
- How many spin-out companies has the University of East Anglia created where it retains equity (based on university-owned IP)?
Please give information on any defence focused or dual-use spin-out companies.
- How many licensing agreements has the University of East Anglia executed for defence, security, or dual-use technologies?
- Does the University of East Anglia track revenue generated from defence, security, or dual-use IP commercialisation? If yes, please provide figures.
Question 4. Regional/National Clusters
Is the University of East Anglia part of any defence, security, or dual-use innovation clusters, consortia, or networks (e.g., Regional Defence Clusters, Space Clusters, Cyber Resilience Centres)?
If yes, please list them and describe your role (e.g., lead, partner).
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to defence/security research funding (question 1) and defence industry partnerships and whether we collaborate with defence primes (question 2).
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to defence/security research funding and defence industry partnerships /collaborations is held within two main University departments, Research and Innovation Division (RID) and our Post Graduate Research (PGR) department. There is no central database which outlines all of the information you seek for those two questions, specifically in relation to data held within or PGR department.
For the period outlined in your request we have identified currently around 1,400 Postgraduate researchers registered at the UEA, and more than 23,000 associated research files, which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual associated file and original project proposals and documentation manually.
We have calculated it would take one minute per research file, or 383 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual file. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
Under section 16 of the Act, to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we can provide a response to all your requested for information held by RID only, excluding any data in relation to PGR research/collaborations.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.