Aim
The funding opportunity aims to fund one NetworkPlus to bring researchers from engineering, environmental science and social science together with related disciplines and non-academic stakeholders, particularly industry and community groups to address research challenges around property flood resilience (PFR) adoption and uptake in the UK.
This research network can bring together the broad range of experts that can build research and innovation capability, prioritise research and develop a roadmap for research and innovation. As the evidence base is built up, the possibility exists for a testbed to be developed to track the effectiveness of PFR measures over time and generate best practice guidelines.
Flooding is one of the government’s top five priorities for managing the impacts of climate change, and represents a significant and growing risk to people, properties and businesses across England.
According to the latest Environment Agency national flood risk assessment, around 6.3 million properties in England are now at risk, of which some 4.6 million are at risk of surface water flooding. This is predicted to grow to around 8 million or one in four homes by the middle of the century. The impacts of flooding are severe and long-lasting, both emotionally and physically.
PFR measures can significantly reduce the impacts of flooding and help people and businesses recover quickly, particularly in places that experience surface water flooding where the depth of flood water tends to shallower. It recognises that alongside large-scale flood defences, individual buildings must be flood resilient through:
- resistance – keeping as much water out of the property as possible using measures like flood doors and barriers, self-closing air bricks and non-return valves
- recoverability – making internal adaptations, such as having tiled floors, raised electrics and a flood resilient kitchen, so if water does enter the property, it causes as little damage as possible
- reduction – reducing water run off by retaining and improving drainage at the property level through, for instance, encouraging permeable surfaces and rain gardens
In 2016, a review and action plan set out steps to improve PFR and now, nearly 10 years on, the FloodReady review builds on that work and must be accelerated.
The FloodReady review, published in October 2025, brought together a wide range of stakeholders to set a framework to work together towards practical, affordable and realistic solutions to achieve a more flood-resilient future. Crucial to this is research and innovation are needed to underpin the mainstreaming of property flood resilience.
Scope
The UK has a strong and well-established flood research sector, with advanced capabilities in flood defence engineering and modelling. However, PFR remains an under resourced part of this wider flood research. Currently, only a handful of PFR-focused research projects are undertaken each year and there is a lack of consistent data and standards for property level resilience.
Despite this, there is clear potential to grow the sector. UK universities and Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) have the expertise and infrastructure to support innovation and expansion of PFR. A thriving PFR research community will require collaboration across:
- academia – where individual research projects and interests can be strengthened through an integrated platform
- industry – particularly small businesses developing innovative PFR solutions, which would benefit from RTO facilities and wider support
- government – whose climate adaptation and funding programmes can help build sector capacity and provide applied resilience outcomes
- community – role of flood volunteers, local action groups and the importance of local knowledge in decision making
This NetworkPlus funding opportunity is a direct response to this recommendation. This NetworkPlus will be expected to:
- coalesce academics around core research questions and offer a vehicle to involve industry, stakeholder and community groups to ensure relevance, acceptance and an adoption pathway for PFR sector
- develop a detailed roadmap/programme of collaborative research, develop funding options and bring in alternative partners to implement an initial suite of prioritised and approved research projects and pilot developments, linked to Flood Re Flood Performance Certificate work
- explore the feasibility of a test bed, such as a flood resilient house, to provide an experimental research platform for testing and evaluation of the effectiveness of PFR measures and approaches
More broadly, the NetworkPlus could also achieve these goals by:
- building new communities or creating new links between different existing communities
- bringing focus to the underlying research challenges, opportunities and priorities
- facilitating and improving knowledge exchange between academia, industry, community and government
- supporting initial testing of new ideas and kick-start new collaborations
- growing the area across local and national scales, for the benefit of the whole UK
- lowering barriers for engagement of non-academic stakeholders, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
- facilitating impact and advance policy
- growing capacity for and dissemination of good practice in the area of the research focus, such as Responsible Research and Innovation, Trusted Research, and ethics.
The NetworkPlus investment can undertake a variety of activities including:
- workshops
- events
- secondments
- horizon scanning and generation of new ideas
- managing a flexible fund to run small funding opportunities to support high-risk research projects, new collaborations, feasibility studies or impact acceleration activities. These could be used to support the associated research grant holders or broader members of the community
This list is not exhaustive, and the successful network(s) is not obliged to do all the above. You are encouraged to tailor your activities to the needs of the area and to be innovative in their approach.
Expectations
Specific areas of focus based on review of academic research (roundtable)
Remit
The proposed NetworkPlus must fit primarily within our remit, but we also welcome and encourage the involvement of researchers and expertise from other relevant disciplines across the remit of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), specifically from social and environmental sciences.
Workstreams should be co-created with appropriately interdisciplinary collaborators and non-academic stakeholders who can provide further understanding of the contextual factors that influence solutions to challenges as described in the FloodReady review.
User engagement
It is essential that user engagement is considered in the wider network membership. It is expected that every application will have active engagement with relevant project partners to meet the ambition for the NetworkPlus to increase engagement with non-academic stakeholders.
To achieve this ambition, we recommend that the application is co-created with project partners, such as the stakeholders involved in the FloodReady review. It will be a requirement that there is a minimum of 10% leveraging from project partners (cash or in-kind) against the total fund amount (100% of full economic cost).
In addition to providing cash contribution, a project partner could also contribute to the NetworkPlus through a number of ways, for example acting as the primary host for secondees from academia, providing real data, management time and facilities. Such contributions will be considered as part of the assessment process. As such, relevant and useful contributions could enhance the possibility of success of the bid through peer review.
We expect that the successful NetworkPlus will continue to engage a range of non-academic partners throughout the lifetime of the grant, with an active approach to encouraging continued leverage of contributions against the flexible funds.
Network activities should be UK-wide and should involve a broad range of disciplines and non-academic stakeholders from relevant sectors.
Environmental sustainability
On behalf of UKRI, we expect programmes to embed careful consideration of environmental sustainability at all stages of the research and innovation process and throughout the lifetime of the grant.
Duration
The duration of this award is up to three years.
Funding available
The FEC of your project can be up to £2.5 million.
EPSRC will fund 80% of the FEC.
What we will fund
Investigators’ salaries
The project lead and up to four project co-leads or other roles can request funds to cover their salary costs for the time spent on setting up and leading the NetworkPlus. The salary costs of NetworkPlus participants should not be included in the application and we would not expect these individuals to be project co-leads.
Flexible funds
Flexible funds can be allocated to researchers at any organisation currently eligible for EPSRC funding. You will need to think carefully about how any budget for external distribution will be commissioned through a robust peer review process and how you will ensure processes for the allocation of funds are fair and transparent within the framework of the UKRI Principles of Assessment and Decision making. In this case you will need to think carefully about how this budget will be managed.
Please note that any activities commissioned by the NetworkPlus using the flexible funds will be restricted to EPSRC current research organisation eligibility but will not be bound by standard EPSRC investigator eligibility criterion.
It is the project lead’s responsibility to ensure ongoing governance and correct usage and accountability of the funds. We would expect some examples of the types of projects to be included at the application stage, but the research challenges are expected to evolve throughout the NetworkPlus lifetime and should be co-created and collaborative in nature.
Flexible funds may only be used for activities that may be funded through a standard research grant. For example, funds cannot be requested for studentships or the kind of student costs that would be funded through a training grant.
These funds must be reported on the final expenditure statement (FES) as awarded on the offer letter, and a breakdown of the expenditure must be submitted along with the FES. Flexible funds are funded at 80% FEC by EPSRC.
Travel and subsistence
Travel and subsistence can be requested to enable NetworkPlus participants to meet to exchange ideas and expertise. This may include visits by or to experts overseas.
Administrative support
A sufficient level of administrative support should be requested to help in the coordination and management of the NetworkPlus to ensure smooth running of the NetworkPlus activities.
Organisation of activities
Funding can be requested for research and innovation associate staff, consumables, travel and subsistence, and any other costs eligible under ‘directly incurred’ headings. Funding can also be requested for costs involved in running activities such as networking events, expert working groups, debates, virtual discussion forums, lectures, seminars, or problem solving workshops.
You are encouraged to think creatively about the range of activities that could support the delivery of the NetworkPlus aims.
What we will not fund
The NetworkPlus is not expected to carry out longer term research itself. Flexible funds may be used to commission small-scale research activities and small scale equipment across the network.
Equipment over £25,000 is not available through this funding opportunity. We will not be funding laboratory or research equipment for this funding opportunity. We will only support equipment to facilitate communication, networking and events. We welcome innovative and creative thought.
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
See further guidance and information about TR&I, including where you can find additional support.
Additional conditions
The NetworkPlus funding will be subject to the following additional conditions to our standard terms.
Community networking expectations
This grant is awarded on the understanding that, in addition to the core research programme, the project will undertake a wider networking role with the research and user community outside its membership. This may involve coordination of activities such as meetings, workshops or seminars on behalf of us. A dedicated website must be set up within six months of the start of the grant and regularly maintained to provide a resource for engagement with the wider community.
This grant is expected to further develop the network including its academic and user (for example, policy, business, non-governmental organisation) membership throughout the period of funding in order to maximise its impact on a wide range of disciplines. As part of the grant, networks must identify ambitious ‘real-world’ challenges, which require a multidisciplinary approach and will form an agenda for future research in the area.
User engagement strategy
You must develop and execute a strategy for engaging with potential users of the research funded in the project. This strategy should be reviewed and updated regularly as part of the formal management and reporting process agreed for this grant.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
In addition to RGC 3.4, you are expected to prepare a full equality, diversity and inclusion plan for the duration of this grant to demonstrate best practice in equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the lifetime of this funding award. This must be recorded through the grant reporting process.
Project officer appointment
We will nominate a member of EPSRC staff (the project officer) who will be your primary point of contact. The project officer will ensure that the project is being run in accordance with the terms and conditions and in line with financial due diligence. The project officer(s) should have access to all documentation of governance and reporting bodies, in so far as it relates to the administration and application of the grant. As funding administrators, all UKRI staff have agreed to maintain the confidentiality required by all parties involved in EPSRC-funded research.
Advisory board appointment
This grant must establish and run an independent advisory board, or equivalent body, to oversee the running of the project and provide advice on the strategic direction and activities of the project. The terms of reference and membership of this group (at least 50% independent membership and an independent chair) should be agreed with EPSRC. The EPSRC project officer will also be expected to attend and participate in advisory board and other appropriate meetings for the duration of the grant.
It is expected the first advisory board meeting will be held within four months of the start date of the project and there will be two meetings a year with contact outside of the meeting when appropriate.
Flexible funds
Notwithstanding standard grant condition RGC 4.4, the sum awarded under the heading of ‘flexible funds’ can include both directly incurred and directly allocated expenditure. These funds must be reported on the FES as awarded on the offer letter and a breakdown of the expenditure must be submitted along with the FES. If a breakdown of this expenditure is not received, the FESs will be returned. Standard grant conditions apply to all other funds awarded on this grant.
Publicity and branding
In addition to RGC 12.4 publication and acknowledgement of support, you must make reference to EPSRC and UKRI funding and include the UKRI logo and relevant branding on all online or printed materials (including press releases, posters, exhibition materials and other publications) related to activities funded by this grant.
Management structure
You should establish an appropriate management structure with clear lines of responsibility and authority to oversee the day-to-day running of the project. This should be in place within six months of the start date of the grant. The terms of reference and management structure, including the project lead, co-leads and senior investigators must be approved by us in advance as must any changes to this structure. The project officer will EPSRC’s main contact with the project and must receive all meeting minutes of the management committees. We reserve the right to attend any meetings.
Management resourcing
Adequate resourcing to support an appropriate management structure, as specified in the funding opportunity documentation, should be costed within the grant. This includes employing a grant manager on the grant.
