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Britain's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has discovered that one of its research centres — the Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences (CCMS) — has overspent its budget by £2.4 million (US$3.77 million).

A spokesman for the staff labour union, the Institute of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, says representatives from the staff and management will this week attempt to reduce the budget without making redundancies at the centre's three laboratories in Cheshire, Oban and Plymouth.

But observers doubt whether redundancies can be avoided. Some estimates suggest that up to 30 jobs may have to go to compensate for the overspend, which amounts to around 7 per cent of the centre's annual budget. The CCMS has already slimmed down considerably as part of a restructuring exercise one year ago.

It is unclear how or why the overspend occurred, or why the shortfall was not identified earlier. Some staff blame defective accounting software. But most agree that the centre's increasing reliance on income from short term contracts is an important factor — and needs to be reviewed.

One CCMS scientist says he believes the overspend occurred partly because of “optimistic projections” of income from contract research, which accounts for around 40 per cent of the centre's income. The rest of the income is derived from the NERC as core research funding.

This view is shared by the NERC's chief executive, Sir John Krebs. In a statement last week, Krebs said that “all NERC's centres and surveys depend to a greater or lesser extent on external funding⃛ as a result we expect fluctuations in the level of funding, which can sometimes cause cash flow difficulties”.

He added: “This is exacerbated by the move away from large, longer term strategic contracts from government departments to smaller, shorter term contracts to address specific issues. This is an issue for the science base as a whole.”

But one senior NERC-funded scientist claims that the research council's policies are also partly to blame for the funding shortfall — particularly the decision to allow core funding for marine sciences to decline for many years.

In addition, the CCMS's three laboratories are all struggling to find contract research for which they have to compete with universities.