Directly incurred costs

Directly incurred costs are expenditure that is based on actual amounts, used and only for that project and is supported by an auditable record.

Directly incurred cost categories include staff, travel and subsistence, equipment, other, and exceptions.

Audit requirements for directly incurred costs

We expect directly incurred staff to use timesheets so that their actual time is recorded against a project to form the basis of the costs charged.

Where a person is contracted to work 100% of their time on a single project (whether they are working full-time or part-time), timesheets are not necessary as their costs can only be charged to that activity.

In all other cases, timesheets or project time records are required. This includes those who may be contracted to work on two or more projects, since it is essential when charging to have a means of recording and verifying the actual time applied to each activity.

Our expectations are that time recording will be undertaken regularly and continuously and that records will be verified at least monthly.

Directly incurred costs fit into the following categories.

Staff

The payroll costs of all staff on the project, full or part-time, whose time can be supported by a full audit trail can be included. These staff should be justified in the resources and cost justification.

Research, technical and support staff

Where an application includes provision for named research, technical and support staff, BBSRC will normally expect to award funds at 80% of the level requested.

Research and innovation associates, whether named or unnamed, should be requested at a salary level commensurate with the skills, responsibilities, expertise and experience necessary to carry out the proposed research activity. They should also only be employed by an eligible institution named in the application and be based at that institution.

Salary uplift

It will be for those submitting the application to determine the extent to which market conditions make it difficult to recruit staff of appropriate quality in areas of high market demand and therefore require an uplift from normal salary levels.
Provided the uplift has been fully justified within the resources and cost justification section, BBSRC will make the award at that level.

BBSRC reserves the right to provide support at a different level if it is considered appropriate.

Data-driven research

Data-driven research and the development of associated methods, tools and resources are an integral part of contemporary bioscience. Staff support can be requested in the following areas.

Research data management

Support may be requested for any costs related to research data management which will be incurred during the project and not be covered by directly allocated or indirect costs. These costs must be fully justified.

Professional support

Applications should be fully scoped and are expected to include the necessary full or partial FTE roles associated with professional support for data-intensive bioscience, such as for data analysis and management. This can include support through the use of shared facilities and technical professionals such as research software engineers where appropriate.

Skills

Applicants should ensure professional support roles for data-intensive bioscience are made at appropriate salary points in recognition of the competitive market for staff with strong quantitative expertise.

Applications can also support upskilling costs. The rationale for these costs must be clearly articulated in the resources and cost justification.

Salary increments

Salary increments over the period of the project should be taken into account. Do not include anticipated future pay awards. Where it is expected that named research staff will be promoted during the lifetime of the grant, provision may be made for this in the grant application. If a grant does not include provision for such costs, funds may be transferred from other directly incurred and exceptions headings.

Staff contracts

The research organisation is responsible, as the employer, for the contracts of employment of the staff concerned. Consequently, for any redundancy or other compensatory arrangements that may be required.

Work permits, if required, are a matter for direct negotiation between the research organisation and the relevant government departments. BBSRC has no restrictions or requirements on residency, nationality or citizenship in relation to research support staff funded from a grant.

Travel and subsistence

Travel costs for journeys that are an essential part of the investigation and are directly related to the research project, can be claimed as a direct cost on the research grant. All journeys must be identified individually and be fully justified in the application.

Travel and subsistence will be in accordance with UKRI terms and conditions.

Value for money

All travel claims should evidence:

• value for money
• environmental impact
• welfare
• business need

We will only fund standard class train and economy class air tickets. However, there is an exception where there is:

• a justifiable health and wellbeing need
• approval from the research organisation prior to purchase
• evidence of the research organisation approval

Conference attendance

Costs for attendance at conferences may be included where such attendance will be of direct benefit to the research.

BBSRC will expect research and innovation associates employed on the grant to have first call on conference attendance.

Conferences should, as far as possible, be individually identified in the application and attendance justified.

Equipment

For opportunities published before 1 April 2025 the previous costs thresholds will apply. The funding opportunity will specify how equipment costs should be included within your application.

Equipment below £25,000 (including VAT)

Individual items of equipment below £25,000 should be included in ‘directly incurred: other’ costs, and will be funded at 80% of the FEC.

Equipment over £25,000 (including VAT)

Single capital items of equipment over £25,000 should be included under the ’directly incurred: equipment’ cost heading, and will be funded at 80% of the FEC. Additional justification of the requirement for equipment must be provided in the resources and cost justification.

Applicants should obtain and retain quotes for equipment over £138,000 (including VAT), and BBSRC may request them at a later stage.

For applications involving multiple research organisations, we expect the applicants and their research organisations to agree amongst themselves the levels of contribution from the different organisations, and the ownership and hosting arrangements for the equipment. Information should be provided in the resources and cost justification section.

Awards going to organisations from countries on the OECD DAC List

Recipients may be funded at 100% FEC, subject to opportunity specific conditions. Equipment costs are not permitted on funding being awarded to countries not on the OECD DAC List of ODA Recipients, as per project co-Lead (international) policy.

Instrument development

An award, or group of awards, forming a single project will be classed as instrument development by doing one of the following:

• creating a novel instrument that enables research capability not available using any existing instrument
• substantially improve research capability beyond what currently exists, in a way that opens up significant new scientific opportunities

Instrument development can occur in a variety of ways, it might involve the:

• construction of a wholly new instrument from its basic components
• substantial modification of an existing instrument
• integration of two or more existing instruments into a new combined one

In this latter case the proposed integration would need to be technically non-trivial and lead to a capability significantly beyond that of using the component instruments independently.

Awards for instrument development may be funded at 100% FEC.

Applicants should note that the guidance applies to individual pieces of equipment. Other equipment requested on the application but not related to the instrument development will be subject to the standard rules for equipment funding.

Other costs

Costs sought should be specified as far as possible in the application and justified in terms of the requirement for the research proposed. This may include:

• consumables
• specialist publications (not expected in institutional libraries)
• field work and fees
• computing (recurrent cost of computing dedicated to the project only, for example stationery supplies and software licences, not costs associated with use of central computing facilities)
• publication costs (within the period of the grant) associated with research outputs, other than journal articles and conference papers, such as books, monographs, critical editions, catalogues etc. Full justification for such costs must be provided. Publication costs including open access charges, page charges and reprints associated with peer reviewed journal articles and conference papers must not be included in the application
• consultancy fees
• recruitment and advertising costs for staff directly employed on the grant
• equipment related items, such as relocation, maintenance (external contracts and agreements). For equipment maintenance costs, applicants should include a cost breakdown and the costs claimed on the research grant must be on the basis of use for the project
• rental and access charges for equipment (specify equipment or service being used, basis of charging and required hours of usage)
• equipment, complete items costing less than £10,000 (including VAT) only
• direct services and facilities charged on a usage basis where administrative systems efficiently and robustly support this to provide an audit trail. This includes requests for costs for the use of Earlham Institute (formerly TGAC) facility sequencing and the UK 850MHz Solid State NMR Facility at the University of Warwick.

The resources and cost justification should make clear if elements of costs for a complete service, for example glasshouse use, are split between different categories of costs, technicians and consumables, and identify their location within the application. This is required to enable comparisons of different approaches using the same overall resource.

Rental and access charges for equipment

BBSRC will not meet rental access charges on equipment that has been funded by BBSRC or any of the other research councils. BBSRC grant holders should not be charged any element of the capital costs of research council funded equipment.

Requests for rental access charges must be accompanied by confirmation that the equipment was not funded by BBSRC or another research council. How charges have been arrived at must be clearly shown.

Patent and intellectual property rights (IPR)

Patent costs, and other intellectual property rights costs such as those relating to licensing agreements and the establishment of spin-out companies, are not eligible costs on research grants.

Exceptions

Exceptions are directly incurred costs that are funded at 100% of FEC, subject to actual expenditure incurred, or items that are outside FEC.

Costs that are eligible to be included as exceptions will be detailed on the funding opportunity page.

DNA sequencing

In certain instances, resources for DNA sequencing may be supported at 100%. More information is available on the support for sequencing page.

Last updated: 1 July 2025