The NIHR has awarded £97.5 million over five years to fund its new Research Support Service, which provides free and confidential support, advice and expertise for all researchers in England working across the remit of the NIHR.
The new national NIHR Research Support Service will be delivered collaboratively through eight hubs across England - one hosted by Lancaster University- which will each bring together a variety of partners.
Three hubs will provide specialist support in Public Health or Social Care which will ensure that all parts of the research ecosystem are consistently well-served.
The Lancaster University Research Support Service hub will be delivered in partnership with the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester, and Manchester Metropolitan and will be the only one to offer specialist support in Social Care.
Lancaster University's Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medicine Distinguished Professor Jo Rycroft-Malone and Catherine Gedling, the current Director of the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS), who are both Co-Directors of the new service, said:
"We're excited to be launching this new NIHR Research Support Service with colleagues at Lancaster University and in our partner institutions. The service will be providing high quality research support to researchers at all stages of the research journey, including as collaborators. We will be supporting researchers to develop and deliver inclusive, co-produced, environmentally sustainable research including with and on under-researched topics and communities."
The service will support researchers, and those aspiring to be involved in research, at every stage of their research journey, from pre-application through to post-award delivery. The new model will enable health and care researchers to access the most appropriate expert support, independent of their geographic location.
Professor Marian Knight, Scientific Director for NIHR Infrastructure, said: "At NIHR we know that funding the best health, public health and social care research requires effective support for researchers to help develop their projects and ensure they lead to real impact for patients and the public. The RSS will allow us to offer comprehensive expert support at all stages to researchers all over England, to ensure that publicly funded research is the best it can be."
In addition to Lancaster University, the other hubs will be hosted by the University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, King's College London, University of Leicester, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Southampton, and the University of York.
This new service replaces the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) and support funding for Clinical Trials Units (CTUs), which came to an end on 30 September 2023. The RDS will continue to support existing clients until March 2024.
