NPL to return to government management

Move includes closer ties with academia and new PhD training centre at Teddington

The National Physical Laboratory is to be operated by the government and partner with the Universities of Surrey and Strathclyde in a move intended to refocus the organisation on long term scientific research. 

The London-based National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s national centre for measurement and standards, employs more than 500 scientists and engineers and works with both academia and industry. 

For the last 17 years the NPL has been run under contract by private outsourcing company Serco. Under the new arrangement NPL’s operating company will return to government-ownership and its employees will return to being employed by the government. 

The decision to terminate the Serco contract at the end of this year was made in 2012. The NPL said: “This is not a bailout, the arrangement as a Goco [Government-Owned Contractor Operated] has worked well, but constantly contracting in does not create long term stability and is not in the best interests of scientific research. We want to have a closer relationship with academia.”

As part of the move, the NPL is to partner with the University of Surrey and the University of Strathclyde in the areas of space research, healthcare research and industrial applications of metrology. The organisation will also create a post graduate institute, which will be able to train up to 300 PhD students a year at its Teddington site. The institute will most likely be housed in older buildings refurbished for the purpose at Teddington.

NPL said: “We remain a commercial business and its unlikely most employees will notice a change in the day-to-day. It’s quite a big change and it will be interesting to see how the partnership with the universities progresses, particularly with the buzz that comes with having so many young students on the site.”