London, March 19, 2015: For those who follow technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) Britain’s 2015 budgetary announcements will come as a pleasant surprise. The country’s chancellor announced major initiatives including funding for the technology sector. In short new money for new tech.
The chancellor pledged £40m for the IoT research and a £600m investment in freeing up spectrum to be used for wireless broadband along with £7.4m to provide WiFi access for libraries in England. Chancellor George Osborne also announced more funding: £100 million for driverless car technology and £10 million to go towards investigating the “future potential” of digital currency technology.
The £40m will be used for business incubators and research hubs that will develop interconnected technologies for healthcare, social care and the government’s “smart cities” initiative, he added.
After broadband for which Osborne pledged £600 million for in this budget, driverless car tech was top of his list of priorities.
According to UK’s Campaign for Science and Engineering, the “budget includes some very welcome announcements of new money for science and innovation, totalling over £240m. It also contains new details on how previously announced, but unallocated, funds will be spent.
New money
- £40m for demonstrator programmes, business incubator space and a research hub to develop applications for Internet of Things (Innovate UK)
- £100m for R&D into Intelligent Mobility – driverless car technology (Innovate UK)
- £11m for tech incubators in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield (Innovate UK)
- £11.8 million in a new Centre for Agricultural Informatics and Sustainability Metrics in Harpenden, Hertfordshire (Industrial Strategy spend)
- £20m to Health North to promote innovation through analysis of data (Department of Health)
- £60m new Energy Research Accelerator (part Innovate UK, part Research Councils spend – details tbc)
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