Accepting your offer

When you accept your award you will need to:

check the grant agreement
check the details of the award match your application
confirm you agree to any terms and conditions

Getting your offer

In the Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system

We will send an email and offer document to the research development manager or officer through the Je-S system.

To make any amendments you need to contact the research council providing the funding.

The Je-S handbook tells you how to:

In the UKRI Funding Service

We will email the administrator account holder at the lead organisation.

If you are an administrator in the Funding Service you will be able to view:

a list of the awards for your organisation
details of the award holder
status of the award
any tasks due
any sections which have been updated

You can accept the grant agreement or return an offer for amendment with comments.

If you need to amend the start date accept the agreement and then request a change in start date. When you submit the start confirmation you can specify the project’s actual start.

You must tell us if the project lead is expected to change organisations while the award is still being set up so the award can be updated.

Once an award is authorised by UKRI and sent to the research organisation for acceptance, it cannot be re-issued to a new organisation without going through the official transfer process, even if the award has been accepted but not yet started.

There are two recordings to guide you through the process:

In the Innovation Funding Service

There is a different way to accept your award if your project is funded by Innovate UK.

When to accept your award

Unless the research council has issued a specific start date in the terms and conditions, the lead organisation or research development officer will have:

10 working days to accept the award
six months from the announced start date to start the award
42 days from starting the award to submit the start confirmation form

We may withdraw the funding offer if project setup is not completed within these timescales or an alternative timeframe set by us.

Start your award

You need to confirm you have started your award and submit a start confirmation form. You should only do this once your project has started as you cannot submit it for a future date.

The start confirmation can be submitted from either the announced start date or the date the grant agreement is issued, whichever is earliest.

If there is a different start date this will be highlighted:

in the opportunity document
as an additional condition in the award offer

Last updated: 27 March 2025