Search “research governance framework” today and you land on documents that are, technically, retired. The Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care — first issued in 2001 and revised in April 2005 by the Department of Health — was superseded across the UK by October 2017. Yet the phrase persists in job titles, standard operating procedures, contracts and search queries, because the underlying obligations never went away; they were consolidated, not abolished. This explainer sets out what the term still refers to in practice, what replaced it, and the concrete checklist a UK research office needs to satisfy compliance today.
What was the Research Governance Framework?
The Research Governance Framework (RGF) was the Department of Health’s statement of principles, requirements and standards applying to health research within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Health in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each issued their own, broadly parallel versions, so a multi-site UK trial could in practice be answering to four separate documents.
The RGF organised obligations around five domains:
- Ethics and patient information — protecting participants’ rights, dignity, safety and informed consent
- Science — ensuring research design is valid and methodologically sound
- Information — confidentiality, data handling and transparent reporting of findings
- Health and safety, and employment — competence, training and safe working environments for researchers
- Finance and intellectual property — transparent management of funds and fair attribution
One point of genuine confusion: “Research Governance Framework” was never a protected or exclusive title. Non-health public bodies still publish their own documents under exactly this name for research that touches their own remit rather than the NHS — the Gambling Commission maintains a current “Research governance framework” for its evidence programme, and several local authorities (Manchester City Council, Tower Hamlets among them) use the same title for research governance approval processes involving council data or vulnerable residents. These are legitimate, separate documents; they are not the health and social care framework this article addresses, and conflating the two is a common source of misdirected compliance effort.
What replaced it: the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research
The Health Research Authority (HRA) became a non-departmental public body on 1 January 2015 and took on responsibility for research governance guidance in England. Working with the health departments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the HRA then issued the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research in October 2017, replacing the four devolved Research Governance Frameworks with a single, UK-wide document. The HRA has since kept it under active revision — the version in force was last updated in January 2025.
The structural change matters more than a rename. The RGF was organised as five fixed domains; the UK Policy Framework is organised around defined roles across the research lifecycle — funders, sponsors, researchers and their employers, research sites and care providers — with each role carrying explicit duties, rather than a single institution being expected to satisfy five generic principles.
| Aspect | Research Governance Framework (2001/2005–2017) | UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research (2017–present) |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic scope | England only; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each had separate equivalent documents | Single framework covering all four UK nations |
| Issuing body | Department of Health (England) | Health Research Authority, with the devolved health departments |
| Structure | Five fixed domains (ethics, science, information, safety/employment, finance/IP) | Role-based duties across funders, sponsors, researchers, employers and sites |
| Sponsor concept | Introduced but loosely defined | Central and explicit: every study must have an identified sponsor accepting overall responsibility |
| Last major update | Second edition, April 2005 | Updated January 2025 |
Institutions applying for MRC/UKRI clinical research funding must now nominate a sponsor as a condition of the grant, and directors of MRC institutes are required to keep systematic documentation of every project for which sponsorship responsibility has been accepted — a direct operational consequence of the framework’s sponsor-centred structure. Read more about how these governance obligations sit alongside institutional research administration functions more broadly.
Answer-first: common research governance questions
What is an example of a governance framework?
The clearest current UK example is the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research, issued by the Health Research Authority and the devolved health departments. Sector-specific equivalents also exist outside health, such as the Gambling Commission’s own research governance framework, which governs a different remit entirely.
What are the 7 Nolan principles of good governance?
The Nolan Principles — selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership — were set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1995. They underpin conduct expected of anyone working in or for UK public bodies, including NHS research staff and research ethics committee members.
What are the 7 key ethical principles in research?
Widely cited principles include social/scientific value, informed consent, favourable risk-benefit balance, independent review, respect for participants, fairness in selection and confidentiality. UK Research Ethics Committees, coordinated by the HRA, apply equivalent tests when reviewing health and social care research proposals.
What are the 8 elements of good governance?
A commonly cited international model (UN ESCAP) lists participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity/inclusiveness, effectiveness/efficiency and accountability. UK research governance instruments draw on the same underlying accountability and transparency principles, adapted for research-specific risk.
The compliance checklist: what research offices must have in place
Whichever term staff still use internally, a UK research office running health or social care studies needs the following in place to satisfy the current framework:
- A named sponsor — an organisation or individual formally accepting overall responsibility for each study
- Applications and approvals managed through the Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) and, where applicable, a Research Ethics Committee (REC) opinion
- Local NHS Research and Development (R&D) permissions confirmed at every participating site before recruitment begins
- Documented risk assessment covering ethics, scientific validity, data protection, finance and health and safety
- A named Principal Investigator per project with defined accountability
- Data handling compliant with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018
- Insurance and indemnity arrangements appropriate to the research type
- Evidence of Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training and up-to-date competency records for research staff
- Adverse event and complaints reporting procedures, escalating to the sponsor and, where relevant, the REC
- Records retention and archiving arrangements consistent with sponsor and funder requirements
Institutions can cross-check specific terminology — sponsor, REC, IRAS and related definitions — against a standards-aligned research governance terminology dictionary when drafting internal SOPs.
Implications for institutions still using RGF language
Institutions that still reference “the Research Governance Framework” in SOPs, job descriptions or supplier contracts are not automatically non-compliant, but they are working from superseded terminology that can create real gaps. A research governance officer hired against a job description written around the five 2005 domains may miss role-based duties the UK Policy Framework assigns specifically to sponsors or funders. Auditors and REC reviewers now expect documentation mapped to the current framework’s roles, not the old domain structure, so internal policy documents drafted before 2017 — and never revisited since the January 2025 update — are a genuine compliance risk worth flagging in the next governance review cycle.
The practical fix is straightforward: retitle internal documents to reference the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research explicitly, re-map existing SOPs from the five domains to the current role-based duties, and confirm sponsorship arrangements are documented per project rather than assumed at institutional level.
Looking ahead
The Health Research Authority continues to revise the UK Policy Framework rather than replace it outright — the January 2025 update is evidence of an iterative model rather than another wholesale rewrite. For research offices, that means the practical task is not tracking down a new document every few years, but keeping local SOPs, sponsorship records and R&D permissions current against a single framework that evolves incrementally. Institutions that treat “Research Governance Framework” purely as historical vocabulary, while keeping their compliance architecture mapped to the UK Policy Framework’s role-based duties, are the ones best placed to pass audit and REC scrutiny without disruption.
