GERD Increased By 5%

Gross domestic expenditure on research and development increased by 5% in 2011 to £27.4bn according to the ONS. When adjustments are made for inflation the increase is 2% compared with 2010.

The business sector made by far the biggest increase in current price terms with an increase of 8% to £17.4bn compared with 2010 and 6% when adjustments are made for inflation. Research in higher education, including universities higher education institutes also increased by 2% to £7.1bn compared with 2010 and after adjustments for inflation the increase is 0.2%.

Government and research councils, including Defra and the Department of Health and the 7 research councils, accounted for 9% of total expenditure. The research councils R&D expenditure fell by 11% from £1.2bn in 2010 to £1bn in 2011.

Private non-profit organisations which includes charities and trusts in mainly health and medical research include some of the biggest in the world. It is the smallest R&D sector in the UK spending £0.5bn or 2% of total UK R&D spend in 2011.

Gross national expenditure on R&D can also be divided between the civil and defence sectors. The civil sector accounted for 93% of R&D expenditure in 2011, a total of £25.4bn an increase of 5%.

Business Research And Development

Total research and development expenditure in cash terms in business in 2009 totalled £15.6bn, that is a fall of 2.5% on 2008. The ONS sub-divides business R & D into civil and defence spending. Civil R & D expenditure decreased by 1.4% to £13.7bn and defence expenditure decreased by 10.2% to £1.9bn. In real terms total expenditure decreased by 4.1% to £15.6bn within which civil expenditure decreased by 3% to £13.7bn.

The product group with the highest R & D performance was pharmaceuticals at £4.4bn or 28.4% of all spending. Other significant product groups included aerospace (£1.5bn), computers (£1.5bn), motor vehicles and parts (£1.1bn) and telecommunications (£1.1bn). The region with the highest performance in terms of expenditure was the East of England (24.9%), the South East (23%) and the North West (13.1%) and the lowest in England was the North East (2%) and in the UK N. Ireland (1.9%). In terms of employment, the South East was highest employing the most people in R & D with 35,000, the East of England employed 30,000. The North East, Wales and N. Ireland employed the least at 4,000 each.

Less Agricultural Land Used In Development

The majority of the land use change statistics (LUCS) for land changing to residential use are for 2008. The LUCS have 24 land use categories and 58% of dwellings were built on land previously classed as residential, agricultural, vacant or derelict in 2008. The remaining 42% were built on the remaining 20 land use categories.

In 2008, 12% of dwellings were built on previously agricultural land compared to 14% in 2007, a fall of 2%. There has been a general trend since 1998 to use less agricultural land for new dwellings in favour of previously residential land.

Statistics for changes in the use of previously developed land are for 2007 when an estimated 55% of land changing to developed use was previously developed and 35% was previously agricultural land or agricultural buildings.

Provisional estimates also say that the average density of housing increased from 43 dwellings per hectare in 2008 to 45 dwellings/hectare in 2009. The Green Belt has seen an increase in the percentage of land changing to residential use from 5% in 2007 to 7% in 2008. In 2008, 2% of dwellings were built within the Green Belt which is unchanged since 2004.

Increase In R & D Spend

Gross domestic expenditure on research and development increased by 3% in 2008 to £25.6bn from £24.9bn in 2007. In real terms it is about the same. R & D expenditure in 2008 amounted to about 1.79% of GDP which was a small increase on the 1.76% of 2007.

The main performers carrying out R & D in the UK in 2008 were business enterprise up 2% on 2007 to £15.9bn, higher education up 4% to £6.8bn, Government up 4% to £1.3bn research councils up 1% to £1bn and private non-profit organisations up 8% to £0.6bn.

Business enterprise was also main provider of funds with a total of £11.6bn amounting to 45% of all R & D, £2.3bn of which went abroad. The Government provided 31% of funding of all R & D. The figure includes higher education and research councils.