cc: e.l.jones
date: Fri May 17 15:16:36 2002
from: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
subject: CONFIDENTIAL - EPSRC and Tyndall
to: launder,jenkinsn,shackley,halliday,schellnhuber,nash,watson_jim

Dear All,

I thought it worth a confidential circular to you to summarise a telephone conversation I had with Peter Hedges, Programme Manager at EPSRC for Environment and Infrastructure and out of whose budget Tyndall support presently comes:

1.  he enquired politely how Tyndall was progressing and was very pleased John will be arriving as f-t Research Director in the autumn
2.  he expressed a keen desire to visit Tyndall HQ with Peter Bates to get a briefing on research progress.  Once we have a date I will seek to involve 1-2 other Tyndall managers working more in the EPSRC area in this meeting
3.  he has invited me to join a small strategy team to help advise him on where EPSRC's environment and infrastructure programme should go in the next 5 years.  He recognises Tyndall's inter-disciplinary brief and would like some input from us to help steer his Programme
4.  he made an off-the-record comment in this context that he very much saw EPSRC as committing itself to funding a second 5-year term for Tyndall - this was his working assumption and he was wanting to build this spending profile into his long-term vision.

The implication of this conversation is that I believe we *have* made progress with EPSRC, yet we need to follow this up by involving Peter Hedges more in some things/events we do and in return feeding back ideas that will help in the EPSRC review.  This is same message I have had from Peter Bates.

Needless to say, please regard this as a confidential circular - point 4. is clearly not *public* policy and the formal evaluation of Tyndall during 2004 may yet change things.  Still, it means that we now have private statements from NERC, ESRC and EPSRC that they all see their commitment to Tyndall as being at least 10 years.

Regards,

Mike