The Cockcroft Institute (CI) is the de facto national centre for particle accelerator R&D in the UK, comprising about 250 academics, STFC professional accelerator staff, post-doctoral research associates, administrative staff and PhD students, and is probably the largest of its kind globally, delivering world class education, training and R&D in conventional and novel methods of acceleration with major contributions to the realization of national and international accelerator facilities. It is a partnership between the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester and Strathclyde, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The core membership comprises the accelerator physics & engineering groups of the partner universities and the Accelerator Science & Technology Centre (ASTeC) of STFC at Daresbury Laboratory. The University of Strathclyde provides a complementary set of experimental facilities to those available at Daresbury.