CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri grant terms and conditions

  • 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.

  • UKRI FEC Grant Guidance: The 80% Recovery Rule

    UKRI FEC grant guidance sets out how UK Research and Innovation calculates and pays Full Economic Costing on research grants: UKRI funds a fixed 80% of a project’s full economic cost, the research organisation covers the remaining 20%, and costs are split into Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated and Indirect categories under the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology.

    Full Economic Costing (FEC) is the UKRI funding model under which a research organisation states the total cost of delivering a project — including staff time, estates and administrative overheads — and UKRI reimburses a fixed proportion of that total rather than reimbursing itemised expenses alone.

    What is UKRI Full Economic Costing?

    UKRI’s guidance on FEC grant terms and conditions states the underlying principle directly: research organisations indicate the full economic cost of a project in their proposal, and UKRI pays “a fixed percentage of 80% of this sum unless stated otherwise.” The remaining 20% must come from the research organisation’s own resources.

    Where a project also has external co-funding, for example from an industry partner, that contribution is treated as additional to FEC — UKRI still funds 80% of the remaining resources needed, rather than reducing its own contribution pound-for-pound.

    Several categories of cost fall outside the 80% rule entirely. Associated studentships are funded at 100% of UKRI’s standard annual stipend and fee values, and externally contracted social surveys are funded at 100% under the “Exceptions” heading. Postgraduate students are also excluded from the full-time-equivalent (FTE) count used to calculate estates and indirect charges.

    How are FEC costs categorised?

    UKRI’s FEC guidance divides every grant budget into three cost categories, and getting this classification right is the first task for any research administrator building a proposal. Each category is audited, funded and adjusted differently if a grant changes scope or ends early.

    Cost category Definition How it is evidenced
    Directly Incurred (DI) Costs explicitly identifiable to the project — research assistant salaries, consumables, travel, equipment under £25,000 Auditable cash spend, supported by timesheets and invoices
    Directly Allocated (DA) Shared resources used by multiple projects, including investigator time, pool technicians and major facilities Estimates applied at proposal stage; not vired or re-audited during the grant
    Indirect Costs Non-specific overheads — central administration, general laboratory and office consumables, some departmental services A standard rate per research FTE, derived from the institution’s TRAC return

    Estates and indirect rates are not calculated per grant. Instead, a university’s whole-institution TRAC return sets a standard charge-out rate per research FTE, which is then applied to every proposal. Institutions with under £3 million in annual public research income may instead use TRAC dispensation default rates, reviewed annually by UKRI and the UK higher education funding bodies.

    Project leads and co-leads can be funded up to 100% of salary, calculated on a notional maximum of 1,650 hours a year (37.5 hours a week across 44 weeks) — but this investigator time is itself only reimbursed within the overall 80% FEC envelope once combined with the rest of the project’s costs.

    What changed in UKRI’s 2025–2026 FEC guidance?

    UKRI’s FEC grant terms and conditions are not static, and the guidance has been revised twice in the current funding cycle — a detail research administrators updating budget templates should not overlook.

    • Equipment funding at 80% FEC. From 1 April 2025, UKRI moved to fund all new equipment purchases at 80% of FEC rather than the fuller funding some equipment previously attracted, with limited exceptions for dedicated infrastructure opportunities, instrument development awards, and international partner costs in OECD Development Assistance Committee-listed countries.
    • Capital equipment threshold raised. The threshold above which an item counts as capital equipment rose from £10,000 to £25,000 on the same date, reducing the number of smaller purchases that require separate capital justification.
    • No default expectation of matched funding. UKRI clarified that, unless a specific funding opportunity states otherwise, there is no default expectation that institutions provide matched funding on top of the standard 20% FEC contribution.
    • Tighter no-cost extension limits from 1 April 2026. Non-people-related no-cost extensions are now capped at six months over a grant’s lifetime, except in defined exceptional circumstances (such as ethics delays or export-control licensing under Trusted Research and Innovation); extensions approved before 1 April 2026 do not count towards that limit.

    UKRI has framed these changes as a response to its own Research financial sustainability: insights paper, which found research costs have outpaced available funding — the same “sustainability gap” that independent analysis by the Innovation and Research Caucus has linked to persistently low FEC cost recovery.

    How do research administrators apply FEC to a grant budget?

    Building a compliant UKRI budget starts with classifying every cost line as Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated or Indirect before a single figure is entered, since each category is treated differently at award and close-out.

    • Confirm the institution’s current TRAC-derived estates and indirect rates per research FTE before costing investigator and technician time.
    • Cost equipment over £25,000 as capital equipment, and expect it to be funded at 80% FEC rather than assumed to be fully reimbursed.
    • Identify any Exceptions items — associated studentships and externally contracted social surveys — and cost these at 100% rather than 80%.
    • Keep the full FEC figure, not just the 80% UKRI contribution, visible in internal costing tools, since the 20% institutional contribution must be tracked and reported against.
    • Reduce Estates, Indirect and Infrastructure Technician claims proportionately if a funded post goes unfilled or a staff member leaves more than six months before the funded period ends.

    At grant start, only Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated or equipment costs can be drawn down — estates and indirect costs cannot be claimed until the Grant Start Confirmation is issued. At close-out, Directly Incurred costs settle against actual expenditure, while Directly Allocated and Indirect Costs are paid as requested, provided the grant runs its full course and stays within the cash limit.

    FEC grant guidance: frequently asked questions

    What percentage of research costs does UKRI FEC actually cover?

    UKRI funds a fixed 80% of a project’s Full Economic Cost, with the research organisation providing the remaining 20% from its own resources. Some cost types are treated as Exceptions and funded at 100%, including associated studentships and externally contracted social surveys, so administrators should check each cost line against the exceptions list before assuming the 80% rate applies universally.

    What is the difference between Directly Incurred and Directly Allocated costs?

    Directly Incurred costs are auditable cash amounts spent specifically on a project, evidenced by invoices and timesheets. Directly Allocated costs are shared resources — investigator time, pool technicians, major facilities — charged on estimates rather than actual audited spend, and these estimate-based figures cannot be re-audited or vired once the grant is underway.

    What is TRAC and why does UKRI’s FEC guidance depend on it?

    The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) is the agreed sector methodology UK universities use to calculate the full economic cost of research activity from their financial statements. UKRI’s FEC guidance relies on each institution’s annual TRAC return to set the standard estates and indirect charge-out rate per research FTE applied across every grant proposal.

    Has UKRI changed how it funds research equipment?

    Yes. From 1 April 2025, UKRI moved to fund new equipment purchases at 80% FEC rather than fuller reimbursement, and raised the capital equipment threshold from £10,000 to £25,000. Institutions costing equipment-heavy proposals need to budget the 20% shortfall rather than assume equipment sits outside the standard cost-share rule.

    What this means for institutions

    The direction of UKRI’s FEC guidance since 2025 is toward tighter, more explicit cost-recovery rules rather than looser ones: equipment now sits inside the 80% rule, extensions are time-limited by default, and matched funding is explicitly not assumed. For institutions already struggling with the FEC recovery gap documented in UKRI’s own sustainability insights work, each of these changes shifts marginally more cost risk onto the research organisation’s 20% contribution.

    Research administrators building budgets should treat the FEC grant guidance document as a living compliance reference rather than a one-off read: rates, thresholds and exception lists are reviewed and republished, and the terms and conditions in force at the time of a purchase or activity — not at the time the grant was awarded — are the ones that apply for audit purposes.