24th November 2014

SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

WRITTEN SUBMISSION OF EVIDENCE FROM ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW

Richard Deverell, Director, RBG Kew

KEY MESSAGES:

Kew matters: Kew is the global resource for plant knowledge and the world’s leading botanic garden. We do 4 things:

1. We research domestic and global flora;
2. We curate internationally important collections;
3. We inspire and educate people about the importance of plants;
4. We maintain a World Heritage Site, Kew Gardens.

We have world-class collections and expertise, enabling research and education on the sustainable uses and conservation of plants around the world. The core purpose of RBG Kew stems from a simple but often overlooked truth: that all our lives depend on plants. We are a world-class organisation; an asset for the UK and the world.

Kew is undergoing a significant transition: At a time when the world needs RBG Kew’s leadership and expertise more than ever, we are tackling considerable issues. We have an acute challenge in balancing our budgets, which means we must address long-standing structural issues around the costs of RBG Kew and long-term underinvestment in our infrastructure. We are devising and implementing strategies that will see our science rejuvenated, our appeal to visitors redoubled and our contribution to UK and global wellbeing recognised. We recognise the need for all parts of the public sector to contribute to deficit reduction. We won’t cut our way to success, so have rapidly grown self-generated income (50% since 11/12), with further stretching targets to come.

Kew’s plan for success: We are tackling these legacy issues in collaboration with Government:

• We are developing long term strategies that will secure RBG Kew at the heart of the UK’s national science and education capability. A long term planning horizon, from RBG Kew and Government is crucial in order to achieve long term success;
• Through restructuring, we are creating an organisation that is oriented towards delivery and reducing the structural cost of our staffing;
• Our Science restructuring will facilitate a focus on clearer scientific outcomes, enable us to leverage grant income, introduce proper career structures for our staff and reinvigorate the talent pool of RBG Kew and UK science;
• We are devising options to reduce the liabilities of our World Heritage Site estate, which is so intimately linked to our purpose; a world-class organisation should be built on world-class infrastructure;
• Underlying all this, our mixed funding model is being reviewed, ensuring it is balanced appropriately and the most efficient model possible; relying on Government funding where there is a strong rationale for it, and growing other sources of income where there are viable markets to do so.

In combination, solving these issues will allow RBG Kew to tackle its deep rooted structural cost base issues and implement strategies to substantially grow revenue, allowing RBG Kew to move towards a more sustainable partnership with Government.

INTRODUCTION TO RBG KEW

1. RBG Kew is the global resource for plant knowledge and the world’s leading botanic garden. We have world-class collections and expertise, enabling research and education on the sustainable uses and conservation of plants around the world. The core purpose of RBG Kew stems from a simple but often overlooked truth: that all our lives depend on plants. We are a world-class organisation; an asset for the UK and the world.
2. The National Heritage Act 1983 sets out RBG Kew’s statutory functions[1] - our legal foundations. RBG Kew is both an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body and an Exempt Charity, regulated by Defra under charity legislation. The Board of Trustees of RBG Kew is responsible for overseeing fulfilment of the statutory functions - the Government has a responsibility in overseeing this, for which the Secretary of State for Defra is accountable to Parliament.
3. RBG Kew has two sites – Kew Gardens in South-West London and Wakehurst Place in West Sussex. Kew Gardens is crown land, which RBG Kew manages under direction from the Secretary of State. Wakehurst Place is a National Trust property, managed by RBG Kew on a long-term lease, with adjacent freehold land that houses the Millennium Seed Bank. Both sites are well known as visitor attractions and places of public engagement, welcoming 1.7m visitors in the year 13/14. While less visible to the public, both are centres of scientific expertise.

KEW SCIENCE

4. Our scientific vision is to document and understand global plant and fungal diversity and its uses, bringing authoritative expertise to bear on the critical challenges facing humanity today.
5. The new Science Strategy for RBG Kew, which will be published in early 2015, will ensure that RBG Kew’s science focuses on where it can make a unique impact. RBG Kew’s science will have three priorities:
• To document and understand global plan and fungal diversity and its uses for the benefit of humanity;
• To provide data-rich evidence from RBG Kew’s unrivalled collections to address the critical challenges facing humanity today;
• To disseminate our scientific knowledge of plants and fungi, maximising the impact of RBG Kew’s scientific research in education, science, policy and management.
6. RBG Kew makes a unique and valuable impact in four core scientific areas:
• Identification and naming of plant and fungal diversity;
• Comparative plant and fungal biology;
• Conservation science;
• Identification of the natural capital of plants and fungi, particularly with respect to their contribution to human wellbeing and plant health.
7. Our impact in based upon unique assets – our collections and the expertise of our staff. Both are world-class. RBG Kew’s collections, which date from the 18th Century, are unrivalled in their quality and range:  they include over 7 million dried plant specimens, including over 350,000 that were used to describe their species, a living collection of over 19,000 species across our two sites, 1.25 million dried fungal specimens, 150,000 glass slides detailing plant micro-traits, 45,000 DNA samples, and 17% of the world’s flowering plant species stored as seeds in our Millennium Seed Bank and partner institutions – with a target to bank 25% by 2020.
8. RBG Kew makes a contribution to UK scientific priorities through addressing some of the biggest social and environmental challenges of our age: providing scientific knowledge on the role that plants can play in mitigating the effects of environmental risks and ecological scarcities resulting from the pressures of a rapidly growing, more affluent, global population, and during a time of significant environmental change.

PUBLIC EDUCATION AND HERITAGE

9. Our vision is for Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place to rank among the leading science-based visitor attractions in the UK. The interest in our two public sites and our preeminent status as the world’s leading botanic garden puts us a privileged position to engage and inform the public about plants and fungi. This is fundamental to our vision for the future of RBG Kew, and indeed for public support for conservation. If people understand, they are more likely to care.
10. Currently, more than 100,000 school children visit our sites each year. These programmes have the capacity to grow to reach many more young people. The gardens provide an outdoor learning resource that encourages many that would be deterred from entering a more formal laboratory setting, and evoke the importance and excitement of plant science as a career choice.
11. From September 2015 we are launching a new MSc programme - Plant and Fungal Taxonomy, Diversity and Conservation - based at Kew and partnered with Queen Mary University of London. This year we have 29 PhD students working with Kew Science. The Kew Diploma, from our School of Horticulture, is the gold standard in its field. We use our gardens and collections as a practical resource for explaining biodiversity and to inspire our students.
12. Our programme of events and festivals is increasing the presence of science within the gardens and this has attracted unprecedented levels of media interest in the underpinning science as well as new audiences, as seen in our recent Intoxication festival, which focussed on mind-altering plants. RBG Kew reaches beyond its gardens through leadership of ‘Grow Wild!’, a mass participation programme encouraging people to cooperate to regenerate unloved spaces with UK native wild flowers. The programme is funded by the Big Lottery Fund and will run until 2017.
13. Kew Gardens is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of only four in London, noted for the historic and contemporary association of its landscape, buildings and scientific practice. It is 330 acres of Crown Land which RBG Kew manages on behalf of the State, containing 40 listed buildings and other structures, seven of which are Grade 1 listed.

RBG KEW INCOME AND EXPENDITURE

14. Kew is funded from a mix of public, commercial and charitable income.

RBG Kew self-generated income and total income, 09/10 to 15/16

*Forecast                Source: RBG Kew                           

15. RBG Kew’s self-generated income (i.e. funding from sources other than Government) has grown by more than 50% since 11/12. Forecast revenues for this year will put that figure at over 70%. We have set challenging targets for increasing these revenues. The rate of growth needs to be high, merely for RBG Kew to ‘stand still’: our challenge is if this growth is outpaced by reductions in Government funding.
16. Commercial income is derived from a range of sources: visitor admissions, special events, catering and retail, and consultancy, through the Kew Innovation Unit. Grant-based income is increasing – further growth will be driven by our new Science structure. Charitable income is mostly raised through the Kew Foundation – RBG Kew’s philanthropic partner, an independent charity. The Foundation performs strongly, increasing fundraising totals year on year. Currently the Foundation largely generates restricted funds, where major donors earmark gifts for specific high-profile projects, rather than the unrestricted funding that sustains the organisation. One of our requests of the Kew Foundation is to grow unrestricted income as a priority.

Defra funding for RBG Kew, 09/10 to 15/16

*Forecast                                               †Indicative Allocation               †† Not expected final figure – subject to bidding process  

Source: RBG Kew             

17. There is a strong case for RBG Kew receiving investment from the public purse. This is due to the public good provided through our work in science, public education and maintaining internationally important collections – a priceless national asset. We contribute to the national science infrastructure and provide expert advice and evidence for policy, supporting the aims of Defra and other Government Departments. The cost of these activities cannot be fully met through commercial or charitable income. The Government, through Defra, is RBG Kew’s single biggest funder (forecast to contribute 43% of funds in 14/15). RBG Kew recognises the need to it to contribute to the reduction of the deficit, and that Defra has attempted to insulate RBG Kew from the worst possible cuts.
18. Income from Defra is divided into ‘unrestricted’ funds – i.e. those which are for RBG Kew to spend freely within the parameters of its statutory functions; and ‘restricted’ funds, which are earmarked for specific projects or purposes and generally allocated through an annual and within-year bidding process. Examples of restricted funds include:
• The Millennium Seed Bank (£3m per annum, each year since 11/12);
• Voluntary Exit and Redundancy payments to enable RBG Kew to reduce staff numbers (£2m this year, £1.2m in 13/14 and £1.4m in 12/13);
• The Temperate House Restoration Project (£2m this year, part of £10.6m agreed for the lifetime of the project);
• A portfolio of estates projects (£1.9m this year, £6.8m, in 12/13 and £4m in 13/14);
• A portfolio of IT projects (£1.9m this year, part of an investment of £9.4m since 12/13);
• Equipment in science and horticulture (£0.3m this year).
19. Over this Spending Review period, restricted funding has amounted to between 40 and 50% of total funding from Defra. As more Defra funding falls into the restricted category, many basic operating costs – for example routine maintenance of the Kew estate – are met through annual bidding for capital funds. This entails bureaucratic process, requiring significant management time and effort, and gives RBG Kew high volatility in its funding streams. Rolling this funding into the unrestricted funding would improve our ability to plan and provide a more efficient funding route; this is the funding model enjoyed by our close cousin, the Natural History Museum.
20. A significant proportion of expenditure in RBG Kew is associated with structural costs, and therefore not variable based on activity levels from year to year. Simply maintaining the built infrastructure, collection assets and other statutory obligations is costly. This is a deep rooted issue that has not been adequately tackled in the recent past.
21. For the past decade at least, the estate at Kew Gardens has not had the requisite investment and therefore the site, a World Heritage Site, is in a deteriorating state. The estimated amount needed is c£8m per annum. A continuation of this under-investment on maintenance is unsustainable. RBG Kew would benefit from the annual cycle of unpredictable restricted ‘capital’ grants being rolled into our unrestricted income from Defra.
22. In preparing the budget for the financial year 14/15, a gap of c£5m between planned expenditure and forecast income was exposed. This was due to reduced funding from Government through Defra, the Kew Foundation reducing its unrestricted grant to RBG Kew, and unavoidable rising costs (e.g. pensions and utilities). We have a plan to balance the budget, through increasing our self-generated income, and reducing costs. The Kew Foundation has found extra money to augment its unrestricted funding, and Government has reversed its unrestricted funding cut. Reducing costs is still required for long term sustainable financial health, as over 50% of RBG Kew’s expenditure is staff costs, reducing staff numbers is required.

RESTRUCTURE

23. RBG Kew is undertaking a significant programme of restructuring, driven by more than just the need to reduce costs. We would have restructured even if there was no need to reduce costs. The restructure aims to: (i) improve operational effectiveness; (ii) reduce costs; (iii) improve career development for staff; and, (iv) streamline and simplify the way we work.
24. This organisational restructure is one of our top priorities for 14/15 and a significant undertaking that has taken much of the year to conclude. The process for restructuring each Directorate has followed an agreed procedure, encompassing periods of meaningful consultation with staff and trade unions, according to statutory obligations and Civil Service protocols.
25. The number of full time equivalent (FTE) posts we estimated that we needed to reduce to make the required savings was 125 (c17% of total). We allocated savings across Directorates, with the majority of reductions focused on Corporate Services, Public Programmes and Science, the largest Directorates.
26. The restructure of the Science Directorate is now in its latter stages. RBG Kew’s Science will be organised around six departments: (i) collections; (ii) identification and naming, (iii) comparative plant and fungal biology; (iv) conservation science; (v) natural capital and plant health; (vi) biodiversity informatics and spatial analysis. It will also include an Office of the Science Directorate. These changes will significantly improve the quality and impact of RBG Kew’s science; specifically:
• Greater focus on high impact scientific publications;
• Growth in science grant income;
• Introduction of proper career paths for all Science staff;
• Introduction of new Career Development Fellows to refresh the talent pool of RBG Kew Science and train the next generation of postdoctoral science leaders;
• More effective communication with both specialist and general audiences.
27. The reduction in ‘core’ funded FTE following the Science restructure will be 32, plus 15 FTE vacancies that were also removed – a total of 47 FTEs will have been lost from science since the start of the financial year. An additional 13 ‘project’ funded posts will come to an end as they have a natural turnover when projects finish. This reduction in FTE posts in Science is in line with the c17% reductions planned across the organisation. Reductions in numbers this year will bring numbers of FTE posts down to levels closer to a decade ago.
28. Our Public Programmes and Horticulture Directorates have also recently restructured. Our new structure in Public Programmes will better share our wealth of knowledge and expertise with visitors and potential visitors, communicating to the public why plants matter and drive greater commercial income. In Horticulture, the new structure will enable the team to deliver against Kew’s objectives, with fewer layers of management, improved care of our living collections and clearer career development paths. Corporate Services is mid-restructuring.
29. Despite the present challenges and the difficulties of losing staff, restructuring RBG Kew is laying foundations for a successful future. RBG Kew will emerge with a new, better directed Science Strategy, a more efficient operating model and broader Public Programmes better focussed on communicating the importance of plants to all sections of the public. We expect the restructuring process to have concluded by the end of March 2015.

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