Yearly personal research allowance

[DirtyDennis]

Every member of staff in my Department gets a £1,000 yearly allowance to spend on whatever they like. This goes into our personal research accounts.

I'm on probation and on appointment was given £35,000 in my personal research account to set-up my lab and research group. This £35,000 was meant for equipment and consumables over the 3-year probation term.

I'll have spent or assigned all of this £35,000 by the end of year 1, which is pretty common given that you need to spend a lot at the beginning to get up and running.

I was told last week that I wouldn't be getting my £1,000 personal research allowance until after I've finished probation. I had, however, allocated the money for the next two years of my probation working on the assumption that I'd get the personal allowance as this is separate from my start-up money.

I've got a meeting with my Head of Department next week to discuss this. Academics on here are usually so reasonable with great advice so I just wanted to see whether you think I've got a "case" here (not the right wording but you know what I mean) or whether I'm just going to make a twat of myself.

I'd really appreciate any thoughts at all on this.

I assume you are in sciences? My dept (science) gives £0 per year research allowance, and my previous dept gave £750. so you are pretty lucky overall.

have you got anything written down saying that you will get the extra £1K per year?

can you make a case for why the dept should give you it - why it is critical to a grant or a paper etc.

if they won't give it, ask if there are any other internal funding sources you could apply to ...

Presumably the £35 000 was ringfenced for the lab and research group? I would have thought you are still contractually entitled to the £1 000 - unless it was made clear at the time that it was being folded into the £35K. Personal research funds I would have thought were for books, conference attendance costs etc. That's what I spend mine on.