Reform ‘wasteful’ research grant process, says UK bureaucracy review

Two-stage applications and lotteries for awarding research grants should be considered by UK funders to help cut red tape and speed up peer review, a long-awaited evaluation of UK research bureaucracy has recommended.

The major review, led by Adam Tickell, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, recommended that funders experiment with more innovative approaches to grant awarding, including the introduction of “two-stage application models” in which an expert panel would conduct an “initial triage” on brief summaries of projects before asking researchers with the most promising ideas to submit detailed proposals.

At present, only about 20 per cent of grant applications are funded, the review explained, which means that “single stage processes which require applicants to provide all the information at the outset mean that for a majority of applicants this information is unused and ultimately wasteful”.

“Wherever possible, funding calls should move away from one-stage applications where all the relevant information is submitted at the same time,” states the report published on 28 July, noting that two-stage models are “already used by some funders and have elicited positive feedback”.

Randomised funding systems, in which funding is awarded to researchers using modified “lotteries” of projects deemed to have passed a certain quality bar, “could be considered further”, says the review, although it notes that the results of such experiments in other countries have been “variable” and that there was “no clear answer on their use and [their] effect on bureaucracy”.

Those applying for research grants should also not be required to submit letters of support – either from their institution or their project partners – “in most circumstances”, says the review, which sought to identify “unnecessary bureaucracy [that] diverts and hampers research”. This requirement placed a “lot of pressure” on heads of department asked to write multiple statements of endorsement, it explained.

The findings come more than two years after the review was ordered by Downing Street as part of a series of announcements on science, with Professor Tickell appointed to lead it in April 2021.

It was initiated by Dominic Cummings, then the prime minister’s chief aide, who later told a parliamentary committee that he wanted to see the “de-bureaucratising” of the “expensive disaster zone” of UK research administration and said that UK Research and Innovation chief executive Dame Ottoline Leyser should “wage war on procedure” and report to Parliament annually on her organisation’s efforts to cut red tape.

The review also makes recommendations for UK government departments, which are told that there are “too many requirements related to assurance bureaucracy” and that they are often “complex and duplicative”. To address this, Whitehall departments are urged to work together to ensure that there is “greater alignment” of red tape processes, as should UK research councils.

UK universities are called on to tackle “unnecessary bureaucracy”, with the review claiming that there is a “culture of risk aversion within universities…[that] led to unnecessary approval hierarchies which can cause major delays and operational difficulties”.

However, the recommendations for the sector, described by Mr Cummings as a “massive source of bureaucracy”, are fairly limited: Universities UK should bring together institutions to work on ways to improve “research management issues such as increasing risk appetite and streamlining burdens including through greater standardisation”, and should also examine the “feasibility of delegating research-related approvals to research managers and officers who are closer to research”.

Welcoming the report, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said the “thorough review [will] shine a light on the huge opportunity for improvements”, adding that the “work of our exceptional researchers will not reach its full potential while the research system is bound up by excessive red tape”.

Stephanie Smith, head of policy at the Russell Group, said the report makes “a number of welcome recommendations to improve coordination and standardisation across the sector, streamline the funding application process and free up time for grant holders to focus on research”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com