DHSC Terms and Conditions for NIHR RDN Support: Statement
Date: 19 January 2026
The Department of Health and Social Care has updated its Terms and Conditions for NIHR RDN Support. All studies on the NIHR RDN portfolio must comply with the Terms and Conditions for continued receipt of RDN support. This includes RDN funding, which is partly allocated based on the volume of RDN portfolio activity that takes place at an organisation.
These changes will take effect from 5 January 2026.
A summary of the changes can be found below.
- Inclusion of a requirement that portfolio studies should acknowledge RDN support in publication.
- Inclusion of a requirement for live or near-live uploading of data by sites/ sponsors.
- Clarification that where sponsors delegate responsibility for site-level data provision to a CRO, this must be made clear in the delegated responsibility agreement.
- Updated timelines to remove studies that have achieved no recruitment within a 12-month continuous period, with reasonable exceptions.
- Acknowledgement that DHSC may instruct the RDN to withdraw support and remove commercial interventional studies from the portfolio if studies are not set up within timeframes and reasonable circumstances as set out by DHSC via the UK Clinical Research Delivery Programme.
DHSC is implementing these changes to better enable the RDN to monitor and manage a national portfolio of health and care research across England on DHSC’s behalf, to optimise resource efficiency, and to align with expectations for faster set-up, recruitment and delivery. DHSC will work closely with the RDN to implement and monitor the impact of the changes.
We would like to thank sites and sponsors in advance for their cooperation and support around portfolio reporting, data quality and endeavours to streamline the set-up and delivery of research.
Please contact Priya Ethirajan with any questions: Priya.ethirajan@nihr.ac.uk