NIHR UK Commercial Costing Reference Group Autumn Meeting Summary
Date: 21 November 2025
The group provides cross-sector oversight of the UK interactive Costing Tool content and meets twice a year. The autumn session covered:
- Areas for Refinement – Pharmacy and primary care activities are under review to support revised resourcing for 26/27 update, with unused activities being cleared out and new tariff activities for NHS blood and transplant being collated.
- Quality drives consistency – The persistent issue of site cost coverage escalations were discussed. It was agreed that efforts should concentrate on enhancing the quality of initial costings and optimising existing system-wide resources and skills to mitigate these escalations.
- Workforce empowered by digital enhancements – Proposed digital development of the existing tool, supported by the RD forum’s exploration of robust workforce learning, aims to enhance submission quality through the auto-population of activities aligned with current written guidance. This technological advancement is expected to provide greater assurance in activity capture, thereby accelerating setup times.