Office for National Statistics figures show UK in-house research and development expenditure reached £1.5 billion in 2024, while purchased R&D surged 137.7 per cent over four years to £0.8 billion.
The sharpest figure in new ONS data isn’t the headline total — it’s the pace of change. UK purchased R&D expenditure, covering research acquired from external providers rather than conducted in-house, rose 137.7 per cent between 2020 and 2024, reaching an estimated £0.8 billion in current prices. In-house R&D expenditure climbed 58.1 per cent over the same period to an estimated £1.5 billion, the figures show. Both are subcomponents of the wider national picture rather than total UK research spending, and ONS notes that all figures are rounded and subject to revision.
Set against the full national total, UK gross domestic expenditure on research and development reached £79.4 billion in 2024 — up £3.6 billion compared with 2023 and £7.6 billion compared with 2022. Business performed the largest share at £55.6 billion, around 70 per cent of the UK total, while higher education contributed £17.9 billion (around 23 per cent), the government sector £4.7 billion and private non-profits £1.2 billion. UK government net R&D expenditure rose 11.6 per cent year-on-year to £20.4 billion in 2024, up from £18.3 billion in 2023.
Kent sits within the South East region, which recorded £9.2 billion of business R&D performed in 2024 — around 16.6 per cent of the UK business total. London led all regions at £13.3 billion (around 24 per cent), followed by the East of England at £10.3 billion. Whether the South East’s share translates meaningfully into activity across coastal and rural parts of Kent is less clear; some economists argue that regional aggregates can mask uneven distribution within those regions.
For Kent businesses and institutions, the broader trend still carries weight. The University of Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University and the University for the Creative Arts all participate in higher education R&D captured within the ONS figures, and rising government and business R&D spend can feed through to research grants and collaborative projects. Software development was the single largest product group within business R&D nationally in 2024, at £10.3 billion — a category relevant to Kent’s growing digital sector.
Total UK R&D expenditure represented 2.71 per cent of GDP in 2024, compared with 2.72 per cent in 2023. ONS attributes that marginal dip to changes in GDP rather than any fall in R&D spending itself — and the figure remains above the government’s long-standing 2.4 per cent target.
Source: @ONS