Wednesday 18 June 2025
Funding opportunity announced
Dear All,
We are delighted to be opening a competitive call to allocate some of our Trust research capability funding.
Please find our application form below.
Download research capability funding application form (MS word)Important: If you wish to apply then please return the completed form to [email protected]
We will be hosting a webinar on Tuesday 8 July 12.00 – 12.30pm to share further information and provide the opportunity for potential applicants to ask any questions. Please email us if you would like to receive an invite to this meeting.
Please do share this opportunity with your colleagues and we look forward to receiving your applications.
Many thanks,
Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust Research and Development team
What is research capability funding?
Research capability funding (RCF) is allocated to research-active NHS organisations to enable them to maintain research capacity. It aims to:
- Help research-active NHS organisations to act flexibly and strategically to maintain research capacity and capability;
- Support the appointment, development and retention of key staff undertaking or supporting people and patient-based based research;
- Contribute towards costs of hosting NIHR-funded or ‘adopted’ research that are not currently fully covered across NIHR’s programmes, and that are not met in other ways.
The funding can be spent on salary costs of researchers seeking NIHR funding, preparing proposals for NIHR funding or ‘between grants’.
For further guidance on RCF is available on the NIHR website.
Accessing local research capability funding
Our trust will make a proportion of their RCF available to local professionals and academics who are conducting activity which will contribute to a larger scale research grant application to be sponsored by our trust.
We are inviting applications in two categories:
- Up to £5,000 for up to 12 months. These awards are for Trust clinicians or academics to focus time on earlier development work for research. This could include creating a peer support research network, mentorship or intern time for clinicians wishing to become more involved in research and developing new collaborations with other researchers, or preparatory work to apply for a future research personal award.
- Up to £25,000 per proposal for up to 18 months. These applications are for clinician, academic and lived experience partnerships preparing research proposals to NIHR and require pilot work to inform substantial research proposals that would be sponsored by the Trust.
Timeframe
- Application deadline: 18 July 2025
- Review by award panel: 24 July 2025
- Award notifications: 4 August 2025
- Award start date from 1 September 2025
All questions and applications should be submitted to [email protected]
Support with applications
On 8 July, our R&D team held a webinar to inform the potential applicants about this opportunity in greater detail and to enable them to ask questions. If you were unable to attend this session and wish to recap, then please find attached slides that were presented during the webinar including a document, ‘You asked, and we answered’, which summarises the questions and answers which were exchanged during the session.
You asked, and we answered Webinar slidesIf you have any additional questions not covered within these documents, then please forward them to our R&D team at [email protected] and they will be happy to answer them for you.
