Estates costs may include building and premises costs, basic services and utilities and any clerical staff and equipment maintenance not already included under other cost headings.
Estates costs should be shown as a single figure (£ total for the project) and do not need to be justified in the case for support. All estates costs fall under the directly allocated category.
Research organisations that have passed the quality assurance (QA) process and implemented the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology should apply their own estates rates.
Those research organisations whose implementation of TRAC is not considered robust by the QA process, and who are not eligible for dispensation, must not charge estates costs.
Research organisations that adopt the dispensation available to those with very low volumes of research income from public sources should apply the dispensation default rates for their estates (laboratory and non-laboratory) costs.
Non-university organisations that are not required to implement TRAC must have a robust costing methodology in place that has been validated by the research councils in order to apply their own estates rates.
Non-university organisations that have not yet had their costing methodology validated by the research councils should apply the dispensation default rates for their estates (laboratory and non-laboratory) costs.
Last updated: 17 August 2021