DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED

Active
Company number 04375679Private limited companyIncorporated 2002

Key figures

£343,744,086+18.4%
Net assets 2025/26
+18.4%
Average annual growth 2024/25–2025/26
0100 m200 m300 m400 m2024/252025/26

† DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED filed these accounts on paper, so Companies House publishes them only as a scanned image. The figures for the years marked † were read automatically from the scan and kept only where the statements add up (for example net assets equal total equity), but a reading error is still possible — check the original accounts at Companies House.

Ratios

2025/26

Sector comparison

SIC 72190

Where the company stands among the 5,632 active companies whose first SIC code is 72190 (Other research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering).

Turnover£180,332,520
Higher than 95% · median £1,924,030 among 259 that publish turnover
Net assets£343,744,086
Higher than 99% · median £10,692
Total assets£440,086,471
Higher than 99% · median £64,502
Cash£31,307,625
Higher than 99% · median £53,235
Employees886
Higher than 99% · median 1
Company age24.7 years
Older than 90% · median 7.5 years
Largest in this sector by net assets
  1. CAMBRIDGE ANTIBODY TECHNOLOGY GROUP LIMITED£3.5bn
  2. ELLISON INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, OXFORD LIMITED£1.4bn
  3. GLAXOSMITHKLINE RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT LIMITED£1.4bn
  4. THE BINDING SITE GROUP LIMITED£1.2bn
  5. WAYVE TECHNOLOGIES LTD£895.2m
  6. OXFORD NANOPORE TECHNOLOGIES PLC£463.3m
  7. DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED£343.7m
  8. THE KENNEDY TRUST FOR RHEUMATOLOGY RESEARCH£333.4m
  9. KYOWA KIRIN SERVICES LTD£322.7m
  10. THE PIRBRIGHT INSTITUTE£322.4m

Positions are approximate. Figures come from each company's latest accounts; money and employee figures are compared only with companies that filed accounts in pounds for a period ending in the last two and a half years and are not dormant, so those groups are smaller than 5,632. The line on each bar marks the median.

Summary: DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED

What kind of company is it?

DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED is a private limited company registered with Companies House under company number 04375679. It was incorporated on 18 Feb 2002. Its status is active. The registered office is in Didcot (OX11). Its nature of business (SIC 2007) is other research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering (72190).

How is the company doing financially?

The latest accounts in the database are for 2025/26 (period ending 31 Mar 2026); the company files full accounts. Turnover was £180,332,520. Profit for the year was £53,456,289. Net assets were £343,744,086, up 18.4% on the previous year. Cash at bank and in hand was £31,307,625. Total assets were £440,086,471 and total liabilities £96,342,385. The company had an average of 886 employees. Figures are available for 2 financial years (2024/25–2025/26).

How does it compare with similar companies?

Compared with 5,632 active companies whose first SIC code is 72190: By turnover it ranks higher than 95% of the 259 that publish turnover (median £1,924,030). By net assets it ranks higher than 99% of them (median £10,692). By total assets it ranks higher than 99% of them (median £64,502). By cash it ranks higher than 99% of them (median £53,235). By number of employees it ranks higher than 99% of them (median 1). It is older than 90% of them (median age 7.5 years).

Does it supply the public sector?

The company is named as a supplier in 3 public contract award notices from UK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED since 2023. Contracts awarded to it alone have a combined published value of £61.3k. It is recorded as the recipient of 28 central government grants worth £1.6m, mainly from Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

What do public registers and reports show?

It appears on the Home Office register of licensed sponsors (Government Authorised Exchange, Skilled Worker). HMRC lists it as an importer of goods, mainly machinery, electrical equipment, optical, medical and measuring instruments. HMRC lists it as an exporter of goods, mainly optical, medical and measuring instruments, miscellaneous manufactures, machinery. In its latest payment practices report it took an average of 28 days to pay suppliers, and 13% of invoices were not paid within agreed terms. Its gender pay gap report for 2025/26 shows median hourly pay for women 10.4% lower than for men. It has modern slavery statements on the government registry for 7 years.

When are its next filings due?

The next accounts are due by 31 Dec 2027. The next confirmation statement is due by 15 May 2027.

Filed accounts2024/25–2025/26
2024/25 †2025/26 †
Turnover164,128,679180,332,520
Profit for the year39,527,20953,456,289
Cash at bank and in hand24,371,96131,307,625
Total assets376,089,535440,086,471
Total liabilities85,801,73896,342,385
Net assets / total equity290,287,797343,744,086
Average number of employees864886

A dash (—) means no accounts were filed for that year or the item is not in the accounts; 0 is a zero stated in the accounts. Small companies usually file only a balance sheet, so the profit and loss account is often missing.

Public contracts

3 contracts

DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED is named as a supplier in 3 public contract award notices from UK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED since 2023. Their combined published value is £61.3k.

Contracts
  1. GSS24834 - Project Management FeesUK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED · £24,000
  2. Costs for IAM Project Management ContractorUK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED · £24,000
  3. Eight (8) hours of SAXS data collection Eight (8) hours of cryoEM data collection ST/Y000587/1‡UK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED · £13,320

From contract award notices on Contracts Finder (since 2016) and Find a Tender (since 2021), published by the Cabinet Office under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Values are as published by the buyer and usually cover the whole contract term; the total leaves out awards shared between several suppliers, where the published figure is a ceiling for all of them, placeholder values and single figures of £1 billion or more. Notices marked ‡ do not state a company number and were linked by an exact match on the registered name. Contracts below the publication thresholds and those of devolved buyers that publish elsewhere are not included.

Government grants

28 grants

DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE LIMITED is recorded as the recipient of 28 central government grants since 2018, together worth £1.6m.

Funders
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
20 grants · £1.1m
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
6 grants · £445.6k
Department for Education
2 grants · £4,000
Grants
  1. A versatile machine learning image recognition software for automating synchrotron Macromolecular BeamlinesDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £7,408 · UKRI - UKRI - Scheme
  2. Harwell XPSDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £7,094 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  3. Bacterial chemotaxis signaling: Towards molecular moviesDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £46,774 · UKRI - HEG - Scheme
  4. Open Access Block Award 2023 - Diamond Light SourceDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £10,634 · UKRI - Open Access Block Grant - Scheme
  5. Fragment ScreeningDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £96,108 · UKRI - HEG - Scheme
Show 23 more
  1. Controlling and integrating 2D magnetism in epitaxial van der Waals heterostructuresDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £16,797 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  2. Enabling low-dose and correlative measurements at ePSICDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £82,000 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  3. Utilising lone single atoms as model catalystsDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £133,562 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  4. Breaking the Cage: Transformative Time-resolved Crystallography using Fixed Targets at Synchrotrons and XFELsDepartment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £89,300 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme 21/22
  5. Spin current propagation through epitaxial antiferromagnetic thin filmsDepartment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £16,556 · UKRI - EPSRC - Scheme 21/22
  6. BEORHN: Biological Enzymatic Oxidation of Reactive Hydroxylamine in Nitrification via Combined Structural Biology and Molecular SimulationDepartment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £110,394 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme 21/22
  7. Spin current propagation through epitaxial antiferromagnetic thin filmsDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £22,074 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  8. BEORHN: Biological Enzymatic Oxidation of Reactive Hydroxylamine in Nitrification via Combined Structural Biology and Molecular SimulationDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £139,458 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme
  9. Breaking the Cage: Transformative Time-resolved Crystallography using Fixed Targets at Synchrotrons and XFELsDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £119,064 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme
  10. Structural, Mechanistic and Functional Studies on OxgenasesDepartment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £5,568 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme 21/22
  11. Laser-PEEM/LEEM Facility for Multidisciplinary Nanoscience ImagingDepartment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £201,461 · UKRI - EPSRC - Scheme 21/22
  12. Spin waves to the rescue. Development of a spintronic reservoir computing platform (GRA0326)Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy · £22,286 · UKRI - EPSRC - Scheme 21/22
  13. Spin waves to the rescue. Development of a spintronic reservoir computing platform (GRA0326)Department for Science, Innovation and Technology · £6,751 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  14. Laser-PEEM/LEEM Facility for Multidisciplinary Nanoscience ImagingDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £77,480 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  15. Tomo-SAXS: Imaging full-field molecular-to-macroscale biophysics of fibrous tissuesDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £26,233 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  16. Structural, Mechanistic and Functional Studies on OxgenasesDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £7,469 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme
  17. Development of technology to reduce environmental problems via innovative water purification agentsDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £4,764 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  18. Apprenticeships Participation 16 - 18Department for Education · £3,000
  19. Apprenticeships Participation 18+Department for Education · £1,000
  20. Compositional and Structural Evolution of Plutonium Dioxide: Underpinning Future DecisionsDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £479 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  21. An active materials laboratory for the UK synchrotron with associated equipmentDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £282,917 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  22. CONEXS: COllaborative NEtwork for X-ray SpectroscopyDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £2,456 · UKRI - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) - Scheme
  23. CCP4 Advanced integrated approaches to macromolecular structure determinationDepartment for Science, Innovation and Technology · £15,176 · UKRI - BBSRC - Scheme

From the Government Grants Register published by the Cabinet Office (financial years 2016/17 onwards, Open Government Licence v3.0). It covers grants from central government departments and their agencies where the register states the recipient's company number and the recipient name matches this company; grants from local authorities, lottery distributors and devolved governments are not included.

Statutory reporting

Payment practices1 Apr 2026 – 30 Sep 2026
Average time taken to pay invoices
28 days
Invoices not paid within agreed terms
13%
Member of a payment code
No
  • Within 30 days 87%
  • 31 to 60 days 10%
  • After 60 days 3%
Earlier periods (7)
Period ending
Days to pay
Within 30 days
Late
31 Mar 2026
27
87%
14%
30 Sep 2025
28
89%
11%
31 Mar 2025
27
90%
11%
30 Sep 2024
27
90%
11%
31 Mar 2024
28
88%
12%
30 Sep 2023
30
75%
26%
31 Mar 2023
28
87%
13%

View the latest report on GOV.UK

Gender pay gap2025/26
Median hourly pay
women 10.4% lower
Mean hourly pay
women 7.1% lower
Median bonus pay
women 23.1% higher
Employer size
500 to 999 employees
Lower pay quarter29% womenLower middle25% womenUpper middle22% womenUpper pay quarter17% women
Earlier years (8)
Year
Median hourly pay
Mean hourly pay
2024/25
women 13.7% lower
women 7.6% lower
2023/24
women 6.7% lower
women 8% lower
2022/23
women 7.2% lower
women 9.1% lower
2021/22
women 5.7% lower
women 10.3% lower
2020/21
women 7.7% lower
women 11.8% lower
2019/20
women 2.9% lower
women 7.7% lower
2018/19
women 5.8% lower
women 11.3% lower
2017/18
women 6.4% lower
women 12.1% lower

A positive gap means women's average hourly pay is lower than men's across the whole employer; it is not a comparison of pay for the same work. View on the Gender pay gap service

Modern slavery statements7
2026
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
2025
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
2024
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
Earlier years (4)
2023
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
2022
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
2021
Statement · summary on GOV.UK
2020
Statement · summary on GOV.UK

Figures the company reported itself to the government's Check payment practices service, Gender pay gap service and Modern slavery statement registry (Open Government Licence v3.0). Only large companies and employers with 250 or more staff have to report, so most companies have nothing here.

Registers and licences

Sponsor licence‡
Licence type and rating
Temporary Worker (A rating), Worker (A rating)
Routes
Government Authorised Exchange, Skilled Worker

On the Home Office register of licensed sponsors, which lists organisations licensed to sponsor workers from overseas.

International trade‡

Listed by HMRC as an importer of goods in 12 of the last 12 months on record, most recently August 2026. Main goods: machinery, electrical equipment, optical, medical and measuring instruments, miscellaneous manufactures and glues and enzymes.

Listed by HMRC as an exporter of goods in 12 of the last 12 months on record, most recently August 2026. Main goods: optical, medical and measuring instruments, miscellaneous manufactures, machinery, electrical equipment and iron and steel articles.

From HMRC's monthly lists of importers and exporters. Traders can ask to be left off the lists, so absence does not mean a company does not trade.

Sources: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Care Quality Commission, Home Office and HM Revenue & Customs, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Entries marked ‡ come from lists that do not state a company number and were linked by an exact match on the registered name.

History

3 events
  1. Financial year 2025/26 endedAccounts: turnover £180.3m, net assets £343.7m, 886 employees
  2. Financial year 2024/25 endedAccounts: turnover £164.1m, net assets £290.3m, 864 employees
  3. Company incorporatedPrivate limited company

Dates as recorded at Companies House: incorporation, name changes, officer appointments and resignations, current persons with significant control, and the end of each financial year with figures in the database. Former persons with significant control are not listed.