This page provides general guidance. There may also be additional salary information specific to the scheme you’re applying for, so it’s important to read through all of the guidance first.
Contact us if you need additional support or advice related to salary costs in your grant application.
View all our funding schemesContact us for supportWe don’t typically cover the salaries of investigators. We will consider requests only as set out in our policy covering principal investigators (lead and joint lead applicants) and co-investigators.
The policy applies to any researchers and their host institutions submitting grant applications to or already funded by us. It outlines the circumstances in which we might cover salaries of:
early to mid-career researchers
researchers based outside the UK
co-investigators on clinical studies where salaries are not already covered by other sources
Scheme-specific guidance will outline in which cases salaries may be covered under the grant. We’ve also included some frequently asked questions around investigator salaries below but recommend you read the policy in full alongside these.
Read our investigator salary policy
Early to mid-career researchers can request their salaries, as determined using the Develop Independence and Establish Independence levels on our competency framework.
Senior researchers meeting Transition to Scientific Leadership and beyond may have their salary supported but should read the investigator salary policy to determine if applicable to them.
Early to mid-career investigators can request their salaries be funded in programme, project or primer grant applications, if they meet all the requirements in our policy. Senior researcher salaries can be funded as co-investigator or as a named research staff member on programme awards.
Postdoctoral researchers and technology specialists involved in the management of the project and providing significant intellectual input to grant writing and design can request their salary as a co-investigator on a programme grant.
We typically specify that 80-100% of the research time of an early to mid career researcher must be dedicated to the proposed award for us to consider funding their salary.
You may only use the exceptions in our policy for one individual per award. You may include multiple early career researchers per grant if they are named research staff.
This exception can only be used once per individual.
Our policy allows for the funding of NHS professionals such as:
pathologist
radiologist
other specialty relevant to cancer sites eg hepatologists
We do not usually cover research nurses, as outlined under ineligible costs below.
If an NHS professional will be involved in your project but it is not appropriate for them to be an investigator on the grant, you should include them in your costs and justification as technical expertise.
We will cover co-investigators on clinical studies run through clinical trials units, where the appointment is not already agreed as part of core funding for the clinical trials units and where salary is not covered by other sources.
This should be clearly linked to supporting the career of the investigator. Please contact us prior to including such a request on your grant application, with a detailed justification for this salary.
We typically cover the direct costs of salaries of researchers on fixed term contracts to work specifically on the funded project. This may include fellows, research assistants, data managers, technicians and nurses.
We only cover salaries if the researcher’s salary is not already covered from another source.
Salary costs may be used to fund salary, the employer’s national insurance contribution, and an employer’s pension contribution which will not be higher than the rate used by the University Superannuation Scheme or NHS pension scheme. The proportion of the salary requested should be equivalent to the proportion of time the researcher will be dedicating to the project they are requesting funding for.
Required technical specialists are also acceptable costs as a running expense on the award. The technical specialist should not be a named research staff member or investigator unless they are spending the majority of their time on the award, or qualify for salary buy-out as per our policy for investigator salaries.
Allocated or indirect costs are not generally funded through our response-mode grants.
When you enter salary costs in grant applications, you should only include cost increments in the first year of the award.
If you’re funded, we’ll apply a standard rate of indexation (which is currently 1.75% for FY 25/26) across salaries and running expenses to all subsequent years of an award. Salary costs that include expected increments for the lifetime of the award must not be averaged across it.
We expect host institutions to use this indexation allowance, alongside our flexible virement policy, to pay annual salary increments. Our flexible virement policy is set out in our grant conditions and allows the host institution to freely transfer funds between the salary and running expenses budget allocations in particular circumstances.
If you wish to request budget virement, please contact us in advance with your justification for this request.
Current grant holders can use their existing award to provide a one-off payment per staff on their grant to help offset the current cost of living crisis, providing it aligns with the host institution’s existing policies and is approved by them.
You can move funds between budget headings to cover these costs and you do not need to ask us for permission. But you must ensure that there are enough funds available to meet the remaining costs of their research. We do not currently supplement any shortfalls that may result.
Bonuses and market supplements cannot be charged to the award.
Please see our grant conditions for details of what we’ll cover for Global Talent Visa (GTV) application fees and GTV-associated Immigration Health Surcharges.
We do not cover other visa costs or immigration health surcharge costs except as outlined in our grant conditions for GTV associated costs.
We may consider covering the salaries of postdoctoral staff outside of the UK if conducting specific, essential experiments or providing essential technical services.
Please include detailed justification that experiments to be performed in a collaborating laboratory are essential for the proposal. If funded, these funds would be administered by the lead applicant’s host institution.
PhD studentships can only be funded at our rates as covered in our costs guidance. Any shortfall between our standard fee allowance and the international fee rate must be covered by another source of funding within the host institution and cannot be covered by the student themselves.
We do not fund part-time PhD students and only fund four-year studentships that run within the timeline of the award.
Yes, host institutions may choose to increase PhD stipends above our standard studentship rate to align with their internal policies or other funding arrangements. However, any top-up must not be funded from our awards. These additional costs must be covered by the host institution or other sources.
Our policy on consultant clinician salaries sets out our approach to paying these. It covers all consultants whose salaries are supported by our grants except strategic appointments or the salaries of senior scientists.
Senior scientists are covered under our policy on investigator salaries.
Read our consultant clinician salary policy
In addition to any exclusions or restrictions outlined above, the following costs are ineligible for inclusion in grant applications:
We do not generally allow buy outs or otherwise cover academic teaching time.
We may allow this only where it is necessary for a researcher’s time to be bought out for them to contribute to the research and the time can be fully justified (eg for NHS professionals) are eligible.
For partial salaries, cost the proportion of the salary as the number of programmed activities (PAs) required, not a percentage of the full-time salary. Please state the number of programmed activities in the investigator’s contract.
The maximum number that a partial salary can be based upon is 11, and if costing for 1 additional programmed activity, then justification must be provided.
We do not cover the costs of research nurses through our grants. We may however consider these costs in exceptional cases, where a study is not eligible for research nurse support through local infrastructure such as the NIHR, one of our centres, experimental cancer medicine centre funding or equivalent.
These are not covered unless specified in the scheme’s application guidelines. We do fund clinical research training fellowship through our strategic training programmes.
We do not cover salary costs for administrators or departmental support staff including secretarial support, librarians, or general lab support.
Costs related to masters student are ineligible unless specified otherwise in the specific scheme guidelines.
We do not cover any costs related to UK apprenticeship levies.
We do not allow underspend to be used to fund redundancy costs.
We do not allow recruitment to be covered in the costs requested or for the salary budget to be used for research staff recruitment.
