Costs guidance for grants

Salaries for grant staff

Researchers on fixed term contracts to work specifically on the funded project. This may include fellows, research assistants, data managers, technicians and nurses. 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 (USS) or NHS pension scheme.

Salary increments: When entering salary costs in grant applications, please be aware that CRUK only pays increments in the first year of an award. If funded, CRUK will 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. We expect Host Institutions to use this indexation allowance, alongside our flexible virement policy, to pay annual salary increments. 

• - Salary costs for Principal Investigators and Co-Investigators are generally ineligible costs except as provided in CRUK’s Policy on Funding Investigator Salaries.
• - ‘Buy out’ or otherwise to cover academic teaching time is ineligible. Salaries 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 (e.g. for NHS professionals) are eligible.
• - Research nurse costs are ineligible. In exceptional cases, where a study is not eligible for research nurse support through local infrastructure such as NIHR, CRUK Centre, Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) funding or equivalent, then these costs can be included for consideration by the funding committee.
• - Clinical Research Training Fellowships (CRTFs) are ineligible unless specified in the scheme’s application guidelines. CRUK funds CRTFs through its strategic training programmes.
• - Salaries for administrators and support staff are ineligible (see unacceptable costs).
  - Masters students are ineligible costs unless specified in the scheme guidelines.
  - UK apprenticeship levy costs are ineligible.

  Salaries of postdoctoral staff outside of the UK may be conditionally acceptable if conducting specific, essential experiments or providing essential technical services.

• Please see our detailed Frequently Asked Questions about salaries for further information.

Global Talent Visa Application Costs

Protective clothing

Gloves, lab coats (if CRUK branded), goggles, protective shoes

Equipment purchase costs

Costs may include purchase, delivery, and installation of scientific equipment where that equipment is specific to the grant. CRUK Grantholders should always seek to procure sustainable versions of equipment, even if they are more expensive to purchase. Alternatively, Grantholders should purchase second hand or refurbished equipment, or conduct maintenance of existing equipment as an alternative to purchasing new equipment (see below).

Equipment maintenance costs

For equipment that has been purchased on a CRUK grant, where the warranty has expired.

Equipment access costs

Access fees charged by usage or size of grant where the equipment has not been purchased on a CRUK grant.

Personal computing costs

Where justified, reasonable personal computing costs for named individuals engaged to work specifically on the grant. Standard per-unit IT charges are not acceptable.

Animal research costs

Animal purchase and transportation costs, maintenance (including food), Home Office Project Licences and experimentation costs.  Personal animal licences specifically for grant staff are eligible. However, animal handling training costs and facility licence costs are not eligible.

Cell line authentication costs

Costs to support the authentication of cell lines, for example, screening for contamination by mycoplasma, STR profiling for human cell lines, or DNA fingerprinting for non-human cells. We will also cover purchase of cell lines from cell banks such as ATCC.

Data sharing costs

Archiving, repository fees, data storage costs and data management services. Data management and sharing costs must be reasonable and proportionate in the context of the overall grant. Data sharing costs do not include open access publication fees.

PhD student expenses in the UK

Stipends, running expenses and fees. 

Please note: CRUK does not part-fund studentships, and hence only 100% of costs should be included. Under ‘Running expenses’, up to £2,000 from the overall budget is ringfenced for researcher development activities to attend conferences, external training courses or workshops (registration, travel, etc) over the 4-year studentship. For students already part way through their studentship, the available researcher development activities budget is on a pro-rata of time remaining on the studentship (funding permitting). From 1 Jan 2021, students paying international fees also includes EU and EEA nationals. CRUK will only support fees at the CRUK set home/UK fees rate outlined above. Any shortfall between our standard fee allowance and the international fee rate must be covered by another source of funding by the institution and cannot be covered by the student themselves.

Patient involvement costs

For patient involvement representatives sitting on steering groups or advisory boards specifically relating to the funded research, reasonable travel and subsistence costs, as well as fees or honoraria where applicable.

Fees or honoraria should be no greater than:

• £80 per day (where more than 4 hours is contributed)
• £50 per half day (where between 2-4 hours is contributed)
• £30 for up to 2 hours, or
• where the patient involvement representative is sitting on a committee which includes other professional experts who are offered an honorarium, an amount equal to the honorarium offered to those other professional experts.

Recruitment for participants in population & behavioural studies

Reasonable recruitment for research participants in population & behavioural studies, including using external agencies where required to improve underrepresentation of marginalised groups or to ensure efficient delivery of the research.

Incentives can only be offered in vouchers (no cash, no tobacco or alcohol retail vouchers) and as follows:

1)    per research participant interaction, costs must not exceed more than:

• £10 for surveys or cohort studies
• £60 for qualitative interviews.

2)    total incentives costs must not exceed more than 10% of the CRUK grant award total. In exceptional circumstances, please contact the CRUK Office to discuss any requests that exceed this before applying.

Incentives must be fully justified in ‘running expenses’ in a grant application, listing number of participants and cost of incentive per participant. 

Aligned with our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in research aims, for grant applications submitted after April 2025, costs for patient/participant travel may be requested up to the level of £200 per patient/participant if required, to cover patient/participant travel to sites for the purpose of the research study. These costs can only be used to cover both patient/participant and/or carer travel and cannot be vired to other budget allocations. Applicants may request over this amount if sufficient justification is given. 

We would not expect these costs to exceed more than 10% of the CRUK grant award total. In exceptional circumstances, please contact the CRUK Office to discuss any requests that exceed this before applying. 

Participant travel must be fully justified in ‘running expenses’ in a grant application, listing number of patient/participants for which travel is being costed, and cost of travel per patient/participant.  

For existing awards, underspend may be able to be used for this purpose if sufficient approval is obtained from CRUK. 

Fees for professional or technical services

Consultancy costs for a specific piece of work where appropriately justified. This may include paying an individual who is not a co-investigator or ongoing contributor to perform technical services such as processing samples, data handling. Where appropriately justified these costs may be paid to individuals based outside the UK.

Recruitment

Post advertising, relocation costs, interviewee expenses

If relating to recruiting patients/participants on a clinical trial or other study involving human participants.

Lead Applicants on CRUK fellowships can ask for up to £1,000 personal removal costs if moving to start the fellowship at a new institution if justified in the application and the HI does not pay relocation costs.

If relating to recruitment of posts to a grant

Travel, Subsistence and Childcare, Meetings

As per our Position Statement on Environmental Sustainability of Research, CRUK expects research teams to undertake only essential travel for research activities, using a virtual/digital alternative to the purpose of the travel wherever possible. Where travel is necessary, lower carbon transport options should be considered, even if this comes at a higher price. 

Costs associated with a longer journey when taking a more sustainable form of transport, such as internet connection, subsistence and overnight accommodation are permitted. 

Costs associated with travel for research collaboration purposes directly related to the activity funded on the grant are eligible to be included in a grant application (e.g. research staff spending time in another institution or for essential travel for a multi-institutional grant where face-to-face meetings are required).  

Grant underspend may be used to cover reasonable subsistence, childcare and conference costs associated with travel if the person travelling is funded by the grant and the purpose of travel relates to the grant. 

Confirmation that the above criteria have been met must be obtained from the CRUK office before underspend is used in this way. 

First class travel

Meetings organised/hosted by CRUK where attendee costs are reimbursed directly by CRUK (these costs should not be charged to grants)

Catering / Hospitality

Not eligible on grant applications, but may come from grant underspend if for collaborative meetings relating to the grant and not excessive in cost

If for QQRs or reasons unrelated to research (e.g. staff parties)

Training

Postage / Courier costs

If posting scientific materials (including, if relevant, research survey responses), delivery costs

General postage costs

Publication costs

Page charges, costs of colour printing, reprints but may be paid from grant underspend but are not eligible at application stage.

Publication costs are unacceptable in grant application budgets.

Open access costs (article processing charges or APCs)

CRUK-funded researchers at UK universities eligible for a CRUK open access block grant should recover APC costs from their institution’s open access block grant. If your institution is not eligible for an open access block grant, or if the institution’s annual block grant has been exhausted, grant underspend may be used to fund APCs incurred during course of grant.

APC costs should not be included in application budgets.

Software in excess of ‘personal computing costs’ (see acceptable costs)

If specialised software specific to the funded research (eg. specialised bioinformatics software)

Generic office software

Website design, development and hosting

If appropriately justified and relevant to the success of the grant activities.

Telephone conference call costs

If in lieu of travel expenses for attending a meeting. Also acceptable if incurred in the course of gathering data as part of the grant activities (e.g. telephone interview costs for subjects in behavioural studies). (Infrastructure costs remain the responsibility of host institution).

All other cases