CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri training 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 Terms and Conditions: 2025-26 Grant Changes

    UKRI updated its standard terms and conditions for both research grants and training grants for the 2025–26 academic year, with the most consequential changes taking effect on 1 April 2025 and 1 October 2025. The revisions raise the minimum PhD stipend, extend medical leave provisions, change how equipment costs are funded, and add new national-security compliance requirements. Research organisations need to update internal compliance checklists to reflect all four changes before their next award cycle.

    UKRI terms and conditions are the contractual obligations that UK Research and Innovation attaches to every research and training grant it awards, covering governance, eligible costs, reporting, and — since October 2025 — Trusted Research and Innovation compliance. They apply automatically to any research organisation that accepts UKRI funding, regardless of which of the seven research councils, Research England, or Innovate UK makes the award.

    Why UKRI’s terms and conditions changed for 2025–26

    UKRI published its policy statement: review of the training grant conditions on 30 January 2025, setting out a package of changes following an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) review of doctoral training conditions. The review drew on the EDI Caucus appraisal of the UKRI training grant conditions, an internal advisory exercise UKRI commissioned specifically to test whether existing rules created barriers for disabled students and those needing extended leave.

    The standard terms and conditions of training grant, and the accompanying training grant guidance, were formally replaced with updated versions on 1 October 2025. UKRI republished the training grant terms and conditions as an accessible HTML document on 1 April 2026, retiring the previous PDF-only format — a change that affects how institutions cite and archive the current wording, not the substance of the obligations.

    What changed in the training grant terms and conditions

    The doctoral training changes are the most visible part of the update. UKRI raised the minimum stipend for UKRI-funded PhD students by 8% to £20,780, effective from 1 October 2025 — described by UKRI as the largest real-terms increase to the minimum stipend in over two decades. This is a floor, not a fixed rate: individual training grants and doctoral training partnerships may set stipends above the minimum.

    Alongside the stipend increase, the revised conditions:

    • Allow doctoral students up to 28 weeks of medical leave, with clearer routes to extend their studentship following medical or other leave.
    • Require research organisations to remove procedural barriers that could prevent disabled students from accessing agreed support.
    • Set out explicit expectations for transparency and fair treatment in how leave, extensions, and part-time study arrangements are communicated to students.
    • Clarify Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) stipend calculation for part-time students and require the expected submission date to be recorded on the student record.
    • Introduce clearer processes for flexible or phased returns to study, including a documented plan of study.

    The same 1 October 2025 update also folded in Trusted Research and Innovation requirements that were previously handled separately, so training grant conditions now sit alongside research grant conditions on national security compliance rather than being addressed only through supplementary guidance.

    What changed in FEC, equipment costing, and Trusted Research rules

    UKRI moved to fund all equipment purchases at 80% of Full Economic Cost (FEC) from 1 April 2025, standardising a rate that previously varied by council and grant type. UKRI also raised the threshold at which a purchase must be classified as capital equipment from £10,000 to £25,000, which is intended to reduce the administrative burden of tracking smaller items through capital asset registers.

    On national security, UKRI’s terms and conditions now require research organisations to identify and, where relevant, notify acquisitions that fall under the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act 2021. UKRI states that grant suspension or repayment is a possible consequence of a breach. This is not a new UK law — the NSI Act has applied since 2021 — but its explicit incorporation into UKRI’s grant conditions is new, and it converts a general legal obligation into a specific, auditable grant term.

    Key UKRI terms and conditions changes, 2025–26
    Change Effective date Applies to
    Equipment funded at 80% FEC 1 April 2025 Research grants
    Capital equipment threshold raised to £25,000 1 April 2025 Research grants
    Revised training grant T&Cs published (stipend, leave, EDI, NSI Act) 1 October 2025 Training grants
    Minimum PhD stipend raised to £20,780 1 October 2025 Training grants
    Training grant T&Cs republished as accessible HTML 1 April 2026 Training grants

    Compliance checklist: what institutions must update now

    Research offices need to work through both the research-grant and training-grant strands separately, since they carry different obligations and effective dates. For research grants, finance and grants teams should confirm that costing models already reflect the 80% FEC equipment rate and the £25,000 capital threshold, and that any live proposals or awards agreed before 1 April 2025 are checked against the older rate where transitional provisions apply.

    For training grants, doctoral college and graduate school teams should verify that:

    • Studentship offer letters and stipend schedules reflect the £20,780 minimum from 1 October 2025.
    • Leave and extension policies explicitly reference the 28-week medical leave provision.
    • Disability support processes have been reviewed for the barriers UKRI’s EDI review identified.
    • Part-time student records capture FTE calculations and expected submission dates correctly.

    Across both strands, institutions need a documented process for identifying transactions or partnerships that could trigger National Security and Investment Act 2021 notification duties under the Trusted Research and Innovation conditions, since this is now an explicit grant term rather than a background legal obligation. Research administration teams responsible for post-award compliance are typically best placed to own this checklist, since it spans finance, HR/student records, and governance functions that individually may not see the full picture.

    Common questions about UKRI terms and conditions

    What are UKRI’s terms and conditions?

    UKRI’s terms and conditions are the contractual rules attached to every research or training grant it funds, covering eligible costs, governance, reporting, and compliance obligations such as open access and national security. Research organisations must accept and comply with them as a condition of receiving and retaining UKRI funding.

    What is the UKRI training grant minimum stipend for 2025–26?

    From 1 October 2025, UKRI’s minimum stipend for UKRI-funded PhD students is £20,780 a year, an 8% increase UKRI describes as the largest real-terms rise in over two decades. Individual doctoral training partnerships and grants may pay above this floor but not below it.

    Do UKRI terms and conditions apply to PhD students?

    Yes — doctoral students funded through UKRI training grants are covered by a dedicated set of standard terms and conditions of training grant, separate from the research grant terms that apply to principal investigators. These were substantially revised on 1 October 2025 to strengthen leave, extension, and disability-support provisions.

    What costs are eligible under UKRI terms and conditions?

    Eligible costs under UKRI’s Full Economic Costing (FEC) terms include directly incurred and directly allocated project costs, with equipment now funded at 80% of FEC from 1 April 2025. Costs must stay within the original grant cash limit, and exceptions funds cannot be used to cover ordinary directly incurred costs.

    What this means for research offices going forward

    The 2025–26 revisions show UKRI treating training grant conditions with the same review cadence it has long applied to fEC research grant terms — a pattern research offices should expect to recur. ARMA UK has previously flagged comparable UKRI fEC and training grant terms updates as requiring coordinated review across finance, HR, and doctoral college functions, and that cross-functional approach is again the practical requirement here.

    Institutions that have not yet reconciled their studentship offer templates, capital asset thresholds, and Trusted Research due-diligence processes against the 1 October 2025 and 1 April 2025 effective dates carry live compliance risk on active awards. The next practical checkpoint is UKRI’s 1 April 2026 republication of the training grant terms in accessible HTML format, which institutions should treat as a prompt to re-verify that internal policy documents still cite the current clause numbering and wording rather than the superseded PDF.

  • UKRI Stipend 2026/27: Research Budget Guide for Institutions

    UKRI’s confirmed minimum PhD stipend for the 2026/27 academic year is £21,805, a 4.9% increase on the 2025/26 rate of £20,780, effective from 1 October 2026. The minimum tuition fee UKRI pays providers rises to £5,238, and students with London weighting receive £23,805. Research offices should lock these figures into studentship budgets, award letters and multi-year cost models now, before the autumn intake.

    UKRI stipend rates 2026/27 refers to the minimum annual maintenance payment that UK Research and Innovation requires providers to pay full-time doctoral students funded through its training grants, set out in the Support for UKRI-funded students guidance.

    Contents

    What is the UKRI stipend rate for 2026/27?

    UKRI has set the minimum stipend for full-time, UKRI-funded doctoral students at £21,805 for the 2026/27 academic year, up from £20,780 in 2025/26. The increase, confirmed on UKRI’s Support for UKRI-funded students page (last updated 7 May 2026), takes effect from 1 October 2026 and applies across all seven research councils.

    The rate is a floor, not a cap. Grant holders may pay more within their award budget, and award letters should be checked for any enhanced or discipline-specific stipend that supersedes the UKRI minimum.

    How does the 2026/27 rate compare to previous years?

    The 4.9% uplift for 2026/27 follows an 8% rise the previous year — described by UKRI as the largest real-terms stipend increase for its funded students since 2003. Viewed over a decade, the minimum stipend has grown by roughly 50%, while the minimum fee level has grown more slowly.

    Academic year Minimum stipend (£) Fee level (£)
    2017 to 2018 14,553 4,195
    2019 to 2020 15,009 4,327
    2021 to 2022 15,609 4,500
    2023 to 2024 18,622 4,712
    2024 to 2025 19,237 4,786
    2025 to 2026 20,780 5,006
    2026 to 2027 21,805 5,238

    Source: UKRI, Guidance for training grant holders. Some universities are already publishing forward guidance for the year after next — the University of Glasgow’s studentship funding pages currently cite an indicative 2027/28 minimum stipend of £22,437, though institutions should treat any figure beyond 2026/27 as provisional until UKRI confirms it.

    What else changes: fees, London weighting and exceptions

    Three figures matter for a complete 2026/27 studentship cost model, and they do not move in lockstep. The minimum fee UKRI contributes rises 4.6% to £5,238; the London-weighted stipend rises to £23,805; and one discipline carries a materially different floor.

    • Minimum fee (2026/27): £5,238, drawn by the provider from the UKRI grant and capped at the home fee rate — international students may need to cover any shortfall themselves.
    • London weighting: £23,805, a £2,000 uplift on the standard minimum. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council does not apply this weighting, though EPSRC grant holders may still offer higher stipends within their own budget regardless of location.
    • BBSRC veterinary exception: students on a recognised veterinary degree pathway funded through a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council training grant have a separate, substantially higher minimum stipend of £30,488 for 2026/27 — more than £8,600 above the standard floor.

    Research Training Support Grant (RTSG) allocations, used for conference travel, fieldwork and equipment, are set separately by each council and are not part of the stipend calculation, but should be modelled alongside it for full studentship cost visibility.

    How should research offices budget for this?

    A UKRI studentship typically runs three to four years, so a single rate change touches multiple cohorts and award letters at once. Research offices should treat the 2026/27 uplift as a trigger to re-check every open and pending award, not just new intakes.

    • Update stipend lines in all award letters issued for students starting from 1 October 2026, including any offers made before the rate was confirmed.
    • Re-model multi-year studentship budgets for students who started in 2024/25 or 2025/26, since their stipend typically escalates to the current minimum in each subsequent year of study, not just at entry.
    • Pro-rate correctly for part-time students — UKRI’s minimum applies to full-time study, with part-time stipends calculated pro rata to study intensity.
    • Check discipline-specific exceptions before finalising BBSRC veterinary-pathway budgets against the standard minimum, as the two floors differ by over £8,600.
    • Confirm which council’s terms apply, since terms and conditions for training grants and the statement of expectations for doctoral training set monitoring, leave and reporting obligations that sit alongside the stipend figure itself.

    Award management and reporting for these grants runs through UKRI’s Funding Service (commonly referred to as TFS), which providers use to submit studentship data and manage award terms. Keeping Studentship Data System records current is a condition of training grant compliance, separate from but linked to the stipend obligation.

    Institutional research administration teams should also budget for statutory leave entitlements that continue to accrue stipend payments — including at least 30 days’ annual leave and up to 28 weeks of medical leave in a rolling 12-month period — since these do not reduce or pause the stipend commitment.

    Common questions from research administrators

    What is the new stipend rate for UKRI?

    UKRI’s new minimum stipend for 2026/27 is £21,805, a 4.9% rise on the £20,780 rate paid in 2025/26. It applies to full-time students on UKRI training grants from 1 October 2026 across all seven research councils.

    How much will the UKRI 2026/27 fees be?

    The minimum fee UKRI contributes towards tuition for 2026/27 is £5,238, up from £5,006 in 2025/26. This is drawn by the provider from the training grant and capped at the home fee rate, regardless of a student’s residency status.

    How much is the PhD stipend in London for 2026/27?

    Students with London weighting receive a minimum stipend of £23,805 for 2026/27 — £2,000 above the standard rate. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council does not apply this weighting to its funded students.

    Is the PhD stipend going up each year?

    Yes. UKRI’s minimum stipend has risen every year since 2017/18, including an 8% increase for 2025/26 and a further 4.9% for 2026/27, reflecting sustained pressure to keep doctoral funding aligned with the cost of living.

    Implications for institutional planning

    The 2026/27 uplift is confirmed, not provisional, which gives research offices a firm number to plan against for the coming intake. The harder planning problem is the multi-year tail: students who started under earlier, lower rates will typically see their stipend rise to the current minimum each October, which compounds across a three- or four-year training grant and can leave under-budgeted awards short by the final year.

    Institutions that model studentship costs on entry-year rates alone risk understating total commitment. Building an escalating-rate assumption into every new studentship budget — rather than treating the entry-year figure as fixed — is the single most consequential adjustment research offices can make in response to this cycle of increases.