The UKRI Funding Service is transforming how funding opportunities and awards are delivered and managed across UKRI. By providing a more consistent and efficient service, it is simplifying the funding journey, from finding and applying for funding opportunities through to managing awards.
Continuous improvement is central to the Funding Service. We continue to simplify the processes and policies that support and improve our funding platform. Our aim is to ensure that more effort of researchers and innovators is focused on delivering outcomes and impact, rather than writing and assessing a growing number of applications.
How we are improving the funding service
Updating our approach to grant assessment processes
As part of the UKRI Strategy 2026 to 2031, we are making our funding processes more efficient and sustainable, while continuing to identify and support excellent research and innovation. We are committed to updating our approach to grant assessment to meet the challenges of a modern funding system and, to help relieve pressure on the expert review system, improve timeliness of assessment and strengthen confidence in UKRI’s investment decisions.
There are eight measures that we will bring together to support the management of application volume and assessment quality, while seeking to reduce grant processing times overall and unnecessary burdens on applicants and reviewers. No single measure will be suitable for every funding opportunity. Our approach may combine multiple measures to deliver the outcomes of a funding opportunity. Some of these measures have already been used in response to periods of exceptionally high demand. Others will be trialled and introduced as we learn from what works and continue to adapt and evolve over time.
Information on how applications will be managed and assessed will be provided in the funding finder for all opportunities.
The measures that we are adopting are:
- more actively using demand management for selected funding applications where volumes are expected to be high, by working in partnership with research organisations
- focusing funding for strategic government and societal priorities (priority bucket 2) on larger and longer-term investments to reduce the burden on applicants while supporting strategic outcomes
- empowering UKRI Programme Directors and Opportunity Leads to use assessment approaches that best reflect the aims, desired outcomes and scale of individual funding opportunities
- using in-person verification, such as interviews, for higher-risk awards where additional assurances are required
- increasing the use of Distributed Peer Review (DPR) for suitable high-volume opportunities across UKRI, building on promising trials of DPR by research councils such as ESRC and BBSRC
- testing an initial triage of applications by UKRI staff, including staff-led desk rejection, supported by the UK Metascience Unit
- trialling a weighted multi-criteria assessment approach to better balance considerations of excellence with the strategic aims of each funding opportunity
- exploring the safe use of AI-assisted assessment, supported by appropriate controls and safeguards, starting with a retrospective trial with the UK Metascience Unit to compare what AI would have concluded from past applications against the decisions that were made
Simpler, standardised application process
One of our foundational principles is to only ask for the information that we need, when we need it. This is based on feedback from applicants who told us that in the old system more information requests were added but none taken away.
To make the Funding Service easier to use for applicants we are:
- standardising and simplifying application processes across UKRI’s research councils
- introducing consistent question sets and assessment criteria
- removing requirements for unnecessary attachments
- streamlining full economic costing rates across UKRI Managing research grants with greater flexibility
We are creating every aspect of the service following the principles of user-centred design.
We recognise the need for greater flexibility for research organisations to make changes to and manage their funding. Our team is working with users to redesign the grant management processes in the Funding Service.
Communicating with the research community
As we introduce changes to the Funding Service, we will be clear about the changes we are making and why we are making them. We will continue to update this webpage to enable a clear single source of UKRI information on changes to funding process.
Last updated: 10 September 2026