The UKRI Tickell review — the Independent Review of Research Bureaucracy led by Professor Adam Tickell — set out how UK research funding should cut needless administrative drag. By mid-2026, UKRI’s Corporate Plan Update 2025 to 2027 shows real but partial delivery: a new integrated back-office platform and further Funding Service development are underway, while full economic costing harmonisation, peer-review speed-ups, and some equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) commitments remain in progress or contested.
The Independent Review of Research Bureaucracy is the 2021–2022 UK government review, chaired by Professor Adam Tickell, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, that examined how funders, universities and government create unnecessary administrative burden across the research system.
- What did the Tickell review actually recommend?
- What has UKRI delivered by 2026?
- Where is delivery stalled or contested?
- How does progress compare across the wider sector?
- Common questions on the Tickell review and UKRI reform
- What this means for research administrators
What did the Tickell review actually recommend?
The review launched in March 2021 and reported with a 63-page final report in July 2022, examining application processes, grant management, assurance and reporting, peer review, data and digital infrastructure, and institutional culture. The UK government published its formal 53-page response on 9 February 2024, describing it as “a roadmap on how the sector will work together to reshape the research system” (GOV.UK, Independent review of research bureaucracy: government response).
That response gave UKRI a new mandate to have “due regard for reducing bureaucracy in all new initiatives and programmes it funds.” It also committed government to reversing rising costs in the Research Excellence Framework, with the next REF cycle expected to be “significantly and measurably less bureaucratic” than its predecessor.
- Recommendations spanning simplified applications, proportionate assurance, and harmonised costing across funders
- A specific commitment (recommendation 12) that funders “should ensure that application processes support their commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion”
- Creation of the Bureaucracy Review Reform and Implementation Network (BRRIN), coordinating UKRI, DSIT and sector bodies including ARMA
What has UKRI delivered by 2026?
UKRI’s Corporate Plan Update 2025 to 2027, published 25 November 2025, is the clearest first-party evidence of where delivery actually stands. It commits UKRI to “deliver transition to a new integrated back-office platform for human resources, accounting, reporting and procurement and optimise functionality of our Funding Service” during 2026, explicitly framing this as moving forward from “delivering the UKRI recommendations from the Tickell and Grant reviews.”
On the applicant-facing side, UKRI’s Reducing Research Bureaucracy page (last updated 2 June 2025) confirms the Funding Service is:
- Standardising and simplifying application processes across UKRI’s seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England
- Introducing consistent question sets and assessment criteria, removing requirements for unnecessary attachments
- Streamlining full economic costing (FEC) rates into a single harmonised costing mechanism
The Corporate Plan Update also sets a concrete operational target: UKRI states it will “demonstrate, through experiments on UKRI funding opportunities, that two-month reductions in grant processing times for research councils can be achieved using novel peer review processes that also improve assessment quality and reduce administrative resources.” Separately, it commits to “testing more proportionate approaches” and “minimising bureaucracy for the sector” as an explicit organisational objective for 2025–26.
Where is delivery stalled or contested?
Not every 2024 commitment has moved as originally framed. Coverage of the government response at the time noted a “potential phasing out of the use of Researchfish from 2025” — the grant outcomes collection system long criticised by researchers as burdensome. UKRI’s own Corporate Plan Update 2025 to 2027 instead commits to retendering the Researchfish system rather than replacing or discontinuing it, alongside evolving “our performance reporting framework to explore potential for greater automation.” That is a materially different outcome from the phase-out some in the sector expected.
EDI commitments also remain contested. The government’s 2024 response took what commentators characterised as a legalistic line, stating that it does not require funders to go beyond their legal duties under the Equality Act, including “the excessive use of Equality Impact Assessments.” This sits uneasily against the review’s own recommendation 12, that application processes should actively support EDI commitments — a tension the Corporate Plan Update does not resolve.
Parliamentary scrutiny in early 2026 also surfaced sector concern that transformation could create short-term disruption: early-career researchers in physics and astronomy raised concerns to UKRI leadership in March 2026 about funding continuity and delayed grant decisions during the transition period, even as UKRI’s CEO told the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee that reforms would bring “greater coherence, greater clarity, greater transparency about how the money gets to output.”
How does progress compare across the wider sector?
The Tickell review was never a UKRI-only exercise — it targeted the whole research ecosystem, and delivery is visibly uneven across bodies with different remits and pace of change.
| Body | Tickell-linked initiative | 2026 status |
|---|---|---|
| UKRI | Integrated back-office platform + Funding Service harmonisation | In active transition through 2026, per Corporate Plan Update 2025–2027 |
| UKRI | Researchfish outcomes system | Retendered, not phased out, reversing earlier 2024 signal |
| NIHR | Excess treatment costs (ETC) simplification | Ongoing, extending bureaucracy reduction beyond NIHR’s own systems (NIHR, 27 April 2026) |
| Health Research Authority | “Removing barriers to research” programme | Responding directly to Tickell recommendations on NHS research approvals |
| ARMA / BRRIN | Bureaucracy Review Reform and Implementation Network | Cross-funder network active; ARMA members contribute across all workstreams |
| DSIT / Research England | REF cost reduction commitment | Government committed to a “significantly and measurably less bureaucratic” next REF cycle |
Read across this table, the pattern is consistent: platform and process harmonisation is genuinely moving, while anything requiring cross-institutional culture change — EDI assurance, REF cost reduction, university-level delegation — is progressing far more slowly than the funder-side technical work.
Common questions on the Tickell review and UKRI reform
What was the Tickell review of research bureaucracy?
The Tickell review was an independent UK government review, led by Professor Adam Tickell, examining how research bureaucracy builds up across funders, universities and government. Launched in March 2021, it reported in July 2022 and the government published its formal response on 9 February 2024, setting out reforms for UKRI and the wider sector to implement.
Has UKRI actually reduced research bureaucracy?
Partially. UKRI’s 2025–2027 Corporate Plan confirms delivery of a new back-office platform, standardised Funding Service application processes, and harmonised costing rates. However, targets such as two-month faster grant processing are still described as experiments to be demonstrated, not completed reforms, as of 2026.
What is the UKRI Funding Service?
The UKRI Funding Service is the single digital platform replacing legacy, council-specific application systems across UKRI’s seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. It applies consistent question sets, removes unnecessary attachments, and is UKRI’s primary vehicle for delivering Tickell review commitments on simplified applications.
Is Researchfish being phased out?
No — not as of the 2025 to 2027 Corporate Plan. Despite 2024 signals that Researchfish might be phased out, UKRI’s latest plan commits instead to retendering the outcomes-collection system and evolving its performance reporting framework, a materially different path from full replacement.
What this means for research administrators
For institutional research offices, the practical implication is sequencing, not completion. Funding Service standardisation and harmonised FEC rates directly reduce per-application administrative effort now; grant-management flexibility, faster peer review, and REF cost reduction remain multi-year commitments to track rather than assume delivered. Institutions engaging via ARMA and BRRIN have the clearest visibility into which workstreams are genuinely moving.
Given the retendering of Researchfish and continued EDI ambiguity, research administrators should treat UKRI’s Corporate Plan Update as a live delivery tracker rather than a closed case: several 2024 government-response commitments have already shifted in scope by 2026, and further revision before the next Corporate Plan cycle is likely.
CASRAI’s research administration resources track how funder-level process reform intersects with contributorship, provenance and reporting standards that institutions must still satisfy even as bureaucracy is streamlined.