CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri grant conditions

  • UKRI COVID Grant Extensions: The CoA Audit Trail

    UKRI COVID grant extensions — formally the UKRI COVID-19 Grant Extension Allocation (CoA) — were a costed, time-boxed funding mechanism used between 2020 and 2021 to extend research and fellowship awards disrupted by the pandemic. Although the scheme closed to new applications years ago, its expenditure still falls inside institutional audit cycles, because UKRI’s funding assurance reviews and grant-condition checks operate on multi-year lookback windows, not calendar-year cut-offs.

    The CoA is defined by UKRI as a supplementary, costed award — distinct from an ordinary no-cost extension — issued to sustain UKRI grant-funded research and fellowships affected by the pandemic, subject to its own terms, conditions and reporting deadlines.

    What was the UKRI COVID-19 Grant Extension Allocation (CoA)?

    The CoA ran from 2020 into 2021 as UKRI’s principal response to pandemic-related disruption of active grants. UKRI’s own FAQ describes its aim as providing “UK organisations with resources to sustain UKRI grant-funded research and fellowships affected by” the pandemic. Unlike a routine no-cost extension, which extends time only, the CoA was a genuine additional award: UKRI’s terms and conditions state plainly that “extensions of CoA can only be offered in specific circumstances and will be supported through an additional award.”

    A related, narrower scheme targeted doctoral students specifically. In February 2021, a written ministerial statement to Parliament confirmed £44 million of urgent funding for up to six-month extensions for PhD students in their final year unable to complete their studies. UKRI later reported a further £19 million committed under the Doctoral Extensions Policy Phase 2 Awards, published in a full report dated February 2025, covering students who could not mitigate pandemic delays through the initial phase of support.

    Both strands closed to new applications once their windows lapsed, but institutions that drew on either allocation retained reporting obligations — a Final Report and a Final Expenditure Statement — that created the audit trail now being revisited.

    Why UKRI COVID grant extensions still surface in institutional audits

    Institutional audits and UKRI funding-assurance reviews do not treat 2020-21 expenditure as closed simply because the pandemic has receded. Grant conditions require institutions to retain records for a defined period after a grant’s Final Expenditure Statement, and CoA-funded costs sit inside exactly the same retention and eligibility rules as any other award expenditure.

    Three forces keep the CoA in scope for auditors in 2026:

    • Retention windows outlast the news cycle. Record-retention obligations attached to a grant run from the Final Expenditure Statement date, not from the original award date — so CoA awards accepted late in the scheme can still be inside their retention period.
    • Funding assurance reviews are cyclical, not one-off. UKRI’s assurance activity revisits institutional financial control on a rolling basis, which means expenditure from 2020-21 can legitimately fall inside a review conducted years later.
    • The CoA was a bespoke instrument, so its rules are easy to misapply. Because the CoA was a costed additional award rather than a standard no-cost extension, staff costs, equipment, and consumables charged against it must be tested against the CoA-specific terms and conditions — not the general no-cost-extension rules that apply to most current requests. Institutional audit teams that apply the wrong rule set are the most common source of a finding.

    CoA vs a standard no-cost extension: what changed under UKRI grant conditions

    The distinction between the CoA and today’s ordinary no-cost extension is the single most consequential fact for an audit reviewing pandemic-era files, and it is easy to lose years after the event.

    Feature UKRI COVID-19 Grant Extension Allocation (CoA) Standard no-cost extension (current UKRI grant conditions)
    Funding basis Costed — supported through an additional award No additional cost; time only
    Maximum duration Case-by-case, tied to pandemic disruption Up to 6 months over the grant’s lifetime for non-people-related reasons; up to the actual delay for people-related reasons (per UKRI guidance updated 7 May 2026)
    Application status Closed since 2021 Open, ongoing route via the grant’s award system
    Reporting obligation Final Report plus Final Expenditure Statement, due by end of 2021 Standard Final Expenditure Statement at the (extended) grant end date

    UKRI’s current guidance on requesting a change to a project confirms the modern no-cost-extension rule directly: “no-cost extensions due to non-people related reasons may not exceed six months over the lifetime of the grant, unless exceptions apply.” Extensions justified by people-related reasons — parental leave, sick leave, recruitment delay — may instead run for the actual length of the delay. Neither rule was designed with the CoA’s bespoke, costed structure in mind, which is exactly why an auditor applying today’s no-cost-extension test to a 2020-21 CoA award will misclassify the expenditure.

    What documentation satisfies auditors reviewing CoA-funded extensions

    Research offices preparing for a funding-assurance visit or an institutional audit that touches pandemic-era grants should be able to produce, for each CoA award:

    1. The original CoA award letter or additional-award confirmation, showing it was issued as a costed extension rather than a no-cost one.
    2. The stated justification for the extension, tied to a specific pandemic-related circumstance rather than a general reference to COVID-19.
    3. Timesheets or equivalent evidence for any staff costs charged against the additional award.
    4. The Final Report and Final Expenditure Statement submitted at scheme close, plus any correspondence extending those deadlines.
    5. A clear cross-reference showing which grant conditions — CoA-specific or standard — governed each cost line, so a reviewer does not default to the wrong rule set.

    Where a doctoral extension was funded under the separate £44 million or £19 million allocations described above, the same principle applies: keep the scheme-specific approval letter alongside the standard studentship file, because the eligibility criteria for those cohorts differ from both the CoA and the ordinary no-cost extension.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the UKRI COVID-19 Grant Extension Allocation (CoA)?

    The CoA was a costed, additional UKRI award — not a standard no-cost extension — issued between 2020 and 2021 to sustain grant-funded research and fellowships disrupted by the pandemic. It closed to new applications once its funding window ended, but its terms still govern how that historic expenditure must be assessed in an audit.

    How long can a UKRI no-cost extension run under current grant conditions?

    Under UKRI guidance current as of May 2026, a no-cost extension for non-people-related reasons may not exceed six months over the lifetime of the grant, unless exceptions apply. Extensions justified by people-related reasons, such as parental or sick leave, may instead run for the length of the actual delay.

    Why do auditors still ask about COVID-era grant extensions?

    Grant record-retention obligations run from the Final Expenditure Statement date, and UKRI’s funding-assurance reviews revisit institutional financial control on a rolling cycle. Both mean CoA-funded expenditure from 2020-21 can still fall legitimately inside a current review, especially where cost lines were charged under bespoke, non-standard terms.

    Can an institution still apply for a new CoA extension today?

    No. The CoA closed to new applications once its funding window lapsed in 2021. Institutions cannot open new CoA claims; the only live task is ensuring historic CoA expenditure and its supporting evidence remain correctly documented against the scheme’s original, costed terms.

    For research offices, the practical implication is straightforward: pandemic-era grant files are not a closed chapter simply because the news cycle has moved on. Institutions that keep the CoA’s costed, bespoke terms clearly separated from today’s standard no-cost-extension rules — and can point an auditor to the correct rule set for each historic cost line — are the ones that clear a funding-assurance review without a finding. That discipline, more than any single retained document, is what the legacy of the CoA now demands of institutional grant administration.

    Research offices building broader institutional compliance capability may also find it useful to review general research administration practice alongside funder-specific rules such as these.

  • UKRI Open Access Block Grant: How It Works

    The UKRI open access block grant is an annual allocation UK Research and Innovation pays to eligible research organisations to help them meet the costs of complying with UKRI’s open access policy for research articles. It is not paid to individual researchers, and it is separate from — and administered differently to — the wider RCUK/Plan S open access mandate debate. This guide explains how the allocation is calculated, what it can and cannot fund, and what institutions must now report back to UKRI.

    A UKRI open access block grant is a lump-sum award, calculated from an institution’s UKRI-funded research volume, that research organisations distribute internally to cover open access publication costs rather than a grant researchers apply for directly.

    How is the UKRI block grant calculated and paid?

    UKRI does not divide a fixed pot equally between universities. Instead, the amount an organisation receives is calculated using an algorithm that uses directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs on UKRI awards as a proxy for research volume, according to UKRI’s own open access funding and reporting guidance. Institutions with a very small UKRI research footprint may receive nothing at all.

    For administrative reasons, only organisations whose calculated entitlement is £5,000 or more are offered an award. Every block grant allocated from 2022 onwards is published on UKRI’s Gateway to Research service, giving institutions and auditors a transparent, checkable record of what each organisation received and when.

    Payment is not a single annual cheque. Under the 2025–26 block grant terms and conditions, the grant covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 is paid via the EPSRC Research grants pay run process in four quarterly instalments, mirroring the cash-flow pattern of a standard research grant rather than a one-off subvention. UKRI’s own figures put total block grant spend at approximately £40 million per year across the research-article scheme, separate from the long-form publications fund described below.

    What can the block grant fund — and what can’t it fund?

    The block grant is deliberately flexible. Research organisations can spend it on any activity that supports compliance with UKRI’s open access policy, not just article processing charges (APCs). UKRI’s terms and conditions and the sector guidance built around them (for example Jisc’s publisher-facing compliance guide) converge on a consistent list of eligible and ineligible spend.

    • Eligible: APCs for fully open access journals and platforms.
    • Eligible: the “publish” element of Jisc-approved transitional (read-and-publish) agreements.
    • Eligible: membership or participation fees for alternative open access models, such as subscribe-to-open schemes.
    • Eligible: repository and green-route infrastructure costs, and staff time spent administering compliance, deposit checking and the block grant itself.
    • Not eligible: APCs for hybrid journals outside an approved transitional agreement.
    • Not eligible: page charges and colour charges.
    • Not eligible: long-form outputs — monographs, book chapters and edited collections sit under a separate, dedicated £3.5 million UKRI open access fund with its own caps (up to £10,000 for a book processing charge, £1,000 for a chapter processing charge, and £6,000 for participation in an alternative open access model, rising by a further £3,000 where an organisation has two or more eligible outputs in a period).

    Researchers cannot normally claim these costs directly from their research grant budget; the block grant exists precisely so that publication costs are pooled and administered centrally by the research organisation rather than budgeted line-by-line inside every award.

    How does UKRI’s grant compare with Wellcome, CRUK and BHF?

    Institutional open access teams frequently administer several funders’ block grants side by side, and confusion between them is a real, current problem. In particular, Cancer Research UK is winding down its own open access block grant from 1 April 2026, with a new CRUK policy taking effect on 1 October 2026 under which CRUK will no longer pay for open access publishing at all. That change concerns CRUK’s scheme only — it does not alter UKRI’s block grant, its eligibility rules or its payment schedule, though several university library guides bundle the funders together in ways that can make the two easy to conflate.

    Funder Scheme status (mid-2026) Hybrid journals covered? Repository deposit required?
    UKRI Ongoing annual block grant, ~£40m/year Only within Jisc-approved transitional agreements Europe PMC deposit required for MRC/BBSRC-funded articles
    Wellcome Ongoing; DOAJ-listed journals only No Europe PMC deposit required; rights retention statement required
    Cancer Research UK Ending — no APC funding after 1 October 2026 N/A (scheme closing) N/A
    British Heart Foundation Ongoing Yes, for original articles Europe PMC deposit required

    For research administrators, the practical takeaway is to treat each funder’s block grant as a distinct compliance stream with its own terms, rather than assuming a single institutional “open access fund” rulebook covers all of them.

    What are institutions’ reporting and assurance duties?

    Reporting obligations on the UKRI block grant have tightened materially for the 2026–27 cycle. Research organisations must already provide high-level information about their block grant spend through their Final Expenditure Statement, the same mechanism used for standard UKRI grant financial reporting, and block grant expenditure now falls within scope of UKRI’s Funding Assurance Reviews. Institutions need governance, financial and risk-management processes capable of demonstrating that funds were used for their intended purpose if selected for review.

    The most significant near-term change is that UKRI is reintroducing dedicated block grant reporting in 2026 to 2027 through a co-developed, lightweight, standardised template, explicitly designed to close evidence gaps around what institutions actually spend the money on. This marks a shift away from the lighter-touch, largely self-certified approach that has applied since the block grant scheme was last simplified, and research offices should expect to log spend by category (APCs, transitional agreements, repository costs, staff time) in a form that maps to that template rather than an internal ad hoc breakdown.

    1. Confirm which team owns block grant financial tracking (library, research office, or finance).
    2. Categorise 2026–27 spend against UKRI’s eligible-cost list as it is incurred, not retrospectively.
    3. Retain invoices and journal/agreement documentation in case of a Funding Assurance Review.
    4. Complete the Final Expenditure Statement and the new standardised reporting template on time.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is the UKRI block grant policy?

    The UKRI open access block grant policy gives eligible UK research organisations an annual lump sum, sized to their UKRI-funded research volume, to cover eligible open access publication costs for research articles. It is administered by the institution, not claimed per-article from a researcher’s own grant.

    How is the UKRI block grant amount calculated?

    UKRI uses an algorithm based on directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs charged to UKRI awards as a proxy for an organisation’s research volume. Only organisations whose calculated entitlement reaches £5,000 or more are actually offered a grant.

    Do researchers apply for the UKRI block grant directly?

    No. Researchers do not apply to UKRI for block grant funding. The research organisation receives and administers the award, and individual authors instead request an APC payment or transitional-agreement cover through their own institution’s open access team.

    Do institutions have to report block grant spending to UKRI?

    Yes. Institutions must summarise spend through the Final Expenditure Statement, and block grants are now included within Funding Assurance Reviews. From 2026–27, a new standardised reporting template is being reintroduced specifically to capture more granular cost evidence.

    What this means for research administrators

    The direction of travel is towards more visibility, not less. A scheme that has run for over a decade on light-touch institutional discretion is moving into a period where UKRI wants comparable, standardised cost data across the sector. Institutions that build 2026–27 spend-tracking around UKRI’s eligible-cost categories now, rather than retrofitting records later, will find the reintroduced reporting template far less disruptive.

    Research administration teams should also keep the funder distinctions in this guide close at hand: UKRI’s own scheme continues on broadly the same basis it has run under since 2022, even as other funders in the same open access landscape — Cancer Research UK most visibly — withdraw block grant support altogether. Conflating the two risks under-claiming funding UKRI still provides, or over-promising APC cover a funder such as CRUK will no longer honour after October 2026.

  • UKRI Training Grant Terms and Conditions Guide

    UKRI training grant terms and conditions govern doctoral studentships and are legally distinct from the standard terms and conditions that apply to UKRI research grants. The two documents share a similar condition-numbering structure but diverge sharply on studentship transfer, extensions, absence/leave, stipend funding shares, and cohort-level data reporting through the Studentship Data System.

    A UKRI training grant funds one or more Studentships at a Research Organisation — typically through a Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) or Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) — and is governed by the Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant, not by the fEC-based conditions that apply to a standard research grant.

    UKRI revised its training grant conditions with effect from 1 October 2025, following a policy statement published on 30 January 2025 after an equality-focused review. DTP and CDT administrators need to know exactly how the training-grant rulebook diverges from the standard research grant rulebook their finance teams already use.

    How Do UKRI Training Grant Terms Differ From Standard Research Grant Terms?

    UKRI training grant terms and conditions are built around the Student and the Studentship; standard research grant terms are built around the funded project and its staff. Both use a similar numbered-condition format, but the numbering and substance diverge from condition 8 onward.

    The Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant run to thirteen Training Grant Conditions (TGC 1–13). The parallel Terms and Conditions of fEC Grants run to fourteen Research Grant Conditions (RGC 1–14) — the extra condition is a dedicated RGC 9 Equipment clause with no training-grant equivalent, and RGC 8 covers Staff where TGC 8 instead covers Student Absence.

    Condition area Standard research grant (RGC) Training grant (TGC)
    Funding basis Full Economic Costing (fEC) — UKRI meets 80% of the assessed project cost At least 50% of the total Studentship cost must be drawn from UKRI; the remainder can come from the Research Organisation or partners
    Condition 8 focus RGC 8: Staff TGC 8: Absence (Student leave categories, including family leave)
    Equipment RGC 9: dedicated Equipment condition No equivalent condition; funds cover stipends, project costs and Research Training Support Grant (RTSG)
    Extensions No-cost extensions for non-people-related reasons capped at six months over the grant’s lifetime (from 1 April 2026) Extensions tied to Student leave categories; Studentship suspension capped at 12 months cumulative absent exceptional circumstances
    Transfer Handled via the standard change-of-institution request process TGC 6 sets an explicit Studentship/Training Grant transfer clause (see below)
    Data reporting Standard financial and technical (final) reporting UKRI Studentship Data System: per-Student records, annual 31 October check, submission-rate monitoring

    UKRI’s own guidance confirms the split directly: TGC 2.10 requires every Student stipend to be at least equal to UKRI’s published minimum rate for the relevant academic year, a rate reviewed annually and typically uplifted from 1 October — a mechanism with no equivalent in the standard research grant conditions, which fund salaries rather than stipends.

    What Are the Rules for Studentship and Training Grant Transfer?

    Under TGC 6, when a Student transfers institutions, the receiving Research Organisation must accept all terms and conditions relating to the Studentship exactly as originally offered — including its start date, duration, registration requirements and submission date. This is training-grant-specific; standard research grant terms have no direct parallel, since a research grant is tied to a project rather than an individual person’s award.

    Where several Students sit on one Training Grant, the two institutions arrange the transfer of funding between themselves; the grant itself stays with the original Research Organisation. Where the transferring Student is the only Student on that grant, UKRI requires the entire Training Grant and any remaining funds to move to the receiving Research Organisation.

    • Receiving institution inherits the original start date, duration and submission date in full.
    • Multi-student grants: funding transfer is arranged institution-to-institution.
    • Single-student grants: the whole grant and remaining balance transfer.
    • Both Research Organisations must record the change in the Studentship Data System.

    What Cohort and Studentship Data Reporting Do DTPs and CDTs Require?

    Training grants carry a data-reporting layer standard research grants do not: the UKRI Studentship Data System, which superseded the Je-S system’s student functionality in 2025. Research Organisations must create a new Student record within one month of starting and log status changes within one month of formal agreement.

    UKRI additionally requires Research Organisations to undertake an annual check of every Student record by 31 October each year, and Councils use submission data from the system to calculate annual submission rates across a DTP or CDT’s cohort — a Studentship terminated before the end of its first year is excluded from that calculation. UKRI states it monitors submission rates and may apply sanctions where they fall short. Standard research grants instead rely on conventional financial and technical end-of-grant reporting, with no equivalent cohort-level mechanism.

    How Do Extensions and Leave Provisions Differ?

    Training grant extensions under TGC 6 are driven by individual Student circumstances rather than project delivery risk. Extensions arise from categories of Absence set out in TGC 8 — family leave (maternity, partner/paternity, adoption, neonatal care and parental leave), medical leave and other specified reasons — and Studentship suspension is capped at a maximum cumulative 12 months unless exceptional circumstances apply. Research Organisations must keep leave records, since UKRI requests this information whenever an extension is sought.

    Standard research grant extensions under RGC 6 work differently: a no-cost extension for a “people-related” reason (parental leave, sick leave, a reduction from full to part-time working, jury service) may run for the full duration of the delay, but extensions for non-people-related reasons — such as recruitment delays — are capped at six months over the grant’s lifetime, and no-cost extensions approved before 1 April 2026 do not count toward that cap. Neither route allows contingency time; every request must state one primary justification.

    Answer-First Q&A on Training Grant Terms and Conditions

    Do UKRI training grants use the same terms as standard research grants?

    No. UKRI training grants are governed by the Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant (Training Grant Conditions, TGC 1–13), a separate document from the Terms and Conditions of fEC Grants (Research Grant Conditions, RGC 1–14) that apply to standard research grants. The documents share structure but diverge on funding share, extensions, absence and studentship-level data reporting.

    Can a UKRI-funded studentship transfer between universities?

    Yes. Under TGC 6, a Studentship can transfer to a new Research Organisation, which must honour the original start date, duration, registration requirements and submission date. If the Student is the sole award-holder on that Training Grant, the entire grant and remaining funds move with them; otherwise the two institutions arrange funding transfer directly.

    What is the minimum UKRI stipend requirement?

    UKRI publishes a minimum Stipend rate for each academic year, and TGC 2.10 requires every Student’s Stipend to meet or exceed it. Rate changes should be applied from 1 October, though UKRI permits limited flexibility around that date, and Research Organisations must never link an uplift to a Student’s individual start-date anniversary.

    How long can a UKRI training grant extension last?

    There is no fixed universal cap — extensions follow the Student’s category of Absence under TGC 8. However, Studentship suspension is limited to a maximum cumulative 12 months unless exceptional circumstances apply, which differs from the six-month non-people-related extension cap that applies to standard research grants under RGC 6.

    Implications for DTP and CDT Administrators

    For institutions running a DTP or CDT, grant finance teams cannot apply their standard research-grant compliance checklist to a training grant file. Studentship transfer, cohort-level monitoring through the Studentship Data System, and Absence-driven extensions each require processes that sit outside the fEC grant workflow.

    Since the October 2025 revision followed an equality-focused review, DTP and CDT administrators should treat the current terms as a baseline UKRI is likely to keep refining, particularly around leave, part-time study and international eligibility. Mapping each Training Grant Condition to a named responsible team — anchored in wider research administration standards rather than folded into general grants administration — is the most durable way to stay compliant as the terms continue to evolve, and will make UKRI’s next round of condition updates easier to absorb without re-auditing every open Studentship file.