National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)
Painting of the laboratory by Lee Campbell, resident artist there in 2009
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| Established | 1900 |
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| Research type | Applied Physics |
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Field of research
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Metrology |
| Director | Peter Thompson |
| Staff | 650 |
| Address | Hampton Road, Teddington, TW11 0LW, England |
| Location | 51°25′35″N 0°20′37″W / 51.42639°N 0.34361°WCoordinates: 51°25′35″N 0°20′37″W / 51.42639°N 0.34361°W |
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Operating agency
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Department for Business, Innovation and Skills - National Measurement Office |
| Website | www |
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.
NPL is an internationally respected centre of excellence in measurement and materials science. Since 1900, when Bushy House was selected as the site of NPL, it has developed and maintained the primary national measurement standards. Today it provides the scientific resources for the National Measurement System financed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
NPL also offers a range of commercial services, applying scientific skills to industrial measurement problems, and manages the MSF time signal. The NPL cooperates with professional networks such as those of the IET to support scientists and engineers concerned with areas of work in which it has expertise.
NPL is at the forefront of new developments in metrology, such as researching metrology for, and standardizing, nanotechnology.
NPL is mainly based on the Teddington site but also has a site in Huddersfield for dimensional metrology and an underwater acoustics facility at Wraysbury Reservoir.
Teddington was also home to the UK National Chemical Laboratory but this was closed in 1965 and some of its work was transferred to NPL.
The laboratory was initially run by the UK government, with members of staff being part of the civil service. Administration of the NPL was contracted out in 1995 under a GOCO model, with Serco winning the bid and all staff transferred to their employ. Under this regime, overhead costs halved, third party revenues grew by 16% per annum, and the number of peer-reviewed research papers published doubled. It was decided in 2012 to change the operating model for NPL from 2014 onward to include academic partners and to establish a postgraduate teaching institute on site. The date of the changeover was later postponed for up to a year. The candidates for lead academic partner were the Universities of Edinburgh, Southampton, Strathclyde and Surrey with an alliance of the Universities of Strathclyde and Surrey chosen as preferred partners. The laboratory transferred back to Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ownership on 1 January 2015.
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