Notice

Annex C-1: North Star Metric Reporting Guidance

Updated 4 July 2023

UK Space Agency’s North Star Metric Reporting Guidance

UK Space Agency grant recipients are required to report on how the grant has led to investment and contract revenue

The UK Space Agency works to ensure that our investment in space brings about real benefit to the UK and its people.

Our principal metric by which the UK Space Agency measures its success is the level of total investment and contract revenue we help to bring into the UK space sector.

Consistent monitoring and evaluation of our programmes is vital so we understand how well we are delivering the UK Space Agency’s objectives. This in turn helps us to ensure we are delivering the National Space Strategy, and informs how we prioritise our resource, select the projects we invest in, and make the case for future public spending on space.

We therefore require, as a condition of funding, that all recipients report the benefits they receive as a result. Please refer to the Grant Funding Agreement.

Data to be collected

Reporting will primarily involve four key elements:

  • Total income

  • Total Internal Investment

  • Total Private Investment

  • Additional detail on funding sources as appropriate

  • Any Additional Benefits you wish to Report

More detailed definitions can be found in the table below:

Term Definition
Private Investment Money invested by companies, individuals, or financial organisations through the following vehicles: equity, grant, prize, debt or alternative finance sources – excluding funding provided by UK Space Agency directly or via the European Space Agency.The source of the investment can be either foreign or domestic.
Internal Investment Investment within a company, or from a parent company to its subsidiary, to cover R&D, capital expenditures and other non-capital expenditures such development of intellectual property.
Total Income Additional Income generated from creation of goods and services, as a result of the specified grant. In the longer term this may also include income generated from royalties and licenses.

1. Data collection

This information will be collected via a simple table below. Please note that data will not be shared with other companies and that it will be held securely in an anonymised form so that you cannot be directly identified.

Grant number Delivery priority(to be filled out by UK Space Agency programme manager) Quarter Total funding value (£) Amount of match funding provided as a condition of UK Space Agency funding (total value £) Additional revenue generated from goods and services as a result of UK Space Agency support(total value £) Private investment generated as a result of UK Space Agency support(total value £) Source of Additional Investment: Foreign/Domestic Internal Investment of funds made as a result of UK Space Agency support (total value £) Additional jobs created as a result of funding received.

Data should only be reported where it could be reasonably stated that the revenue and/or investment in question would not have occurred without UK Space Agency’s funding. Where the revenue and/or investment may have only been partially realised in the absence of UK Space Agency’s funding, best efforts should be made to estimate the proportion of contract revenue and/or investment which can have been said to have occurred as a result.

  • To be reported on a quarterly basis from the start of the activity covered by this agreement.

  • Data will be required for at least 5 years after the completion of the activity covered by this agreement.

  • Where the length of benefit realisation would be longer than 5 years, the UK Space Agency may require an extended reporting period. This is to ensure that we are capturing the full benefits of an activity that has a long time period before those benefits are realised. Where this is the case the UK Space Agency will agree with grant recipients beforehand at the time at which a further request for information is sensible.

  • Any additional benefits that have resulted from UK Space Agency’s funding can also be re-ported through open text response

The information you provide will only be used by the UK Space Agency and not shared with any other parties. Aggregate information may be presented more widely but this will be fully anonymised and not be attributable to any individual organisation.

In addition, this information is being used to assess the agencies impact on the space sector and is not intended to be used as a way to evaluate how the grant is being run. not the individual performance of grants.

Please confirm the name and contact details of the person in your organisation who will be responsible for providing this information.

If you have any specific questions on this requirement, please contact the UK Space Agency programme manager or named UK Space Agency contact.