This funding opportunity falls under UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Creating Opportunities, Improving Outcomes strategic theme, which seeks to improve outcomes for people and places across the UK by identifying solutions that promote economic and social prosperity.
Funding is for a single award.
Clarification of what we mean by key concepts used in this funding opportunity have been provided in the ‘additional information’ section.
Context
A record number of people are registered as economically inactive across the UK, with a significant proportion not in local labour markets because of ill-health, disability, and informal caregiving responsibilities. This has profound implications for individuals, households, and local communities, as well as for the UK’s economy and society as a whole.
Not everyone who is economically inactive due to health or care-related reasons wants a job, nor is work always appropriate for them. A high number of people do want to work, however, but are hampered from doing so due to complex and interrelated personal and structural factors.
These factors and their effects are not felt evenly across the country. Place plays an important role in a person’s chances of accessing (and keeping) work when experiencing ill-health, living with a disability, or providing informal care. Labour market outcomes are influenced by local environmental, social, and economic conditions, including demographic trends, employment services, education and training, housing, health, transportation, and community networks.
Aim
Funding is for a single innovative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project to identify ways of supporting good quality, sustainable economic activity in places experiencing high rates of ill-health, disability, and informal care in the UK.
Scope
The successful project will work across four areas.
The project will develop a deeper contextual understanding of place-based economic inactivity in the UK, with a focus on:
- how different place-based and systemic factors interact to shape and condition health, disability, and informal care-driven economic inactivity at the local level in the UK
- how this economic inactivity, in turn, shapes and conditions local economic conditions and local labour market opportunities
- what types of support are offered to people experiencing ill-health, disability, or informal caring responsibilities, to help them access, remain in, and progress in work. How does this vary between places? How have support offered and the actors involved changed over time?
- what types of support are most effective in assisting economic activity long-term among these groups, and in what contexts. How can this learning inform the design and implementation of effective future support?
In this opportunity, we are interested in informal caregiving as it relates to working age adults providing unpaid care for adult relatives, friends, and neighbours.
The project will actively bridge the research-to-practice gap by:
- better understanding how those designing policy and delivering support activities in the UK acquire and update their knowledge about best practice and ‘what works’, and how they apply this learning to their day-to-day practice
- mobilising this knowledge and developing practical recommendations to support learning and the use of evidence among those designing and delivering support in the UK (including policymakers and employers)
- working collaboratively with a local partner or local partners based in the UK to actively foster learning and evidence-based practice. This could include, for example, working in partnership with a local employer to co-develop targeted recommendations
The project will explore options for widening access to administrative data for inactivity research by:
- working in partnership with Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) and other key data stakeholders to co-identify what existing government and publicly held data could be linked to support future policy and research around economic (in)activity
- co-developing a roadmap and delivery plan for opening up future data access with ADR UK and data stakeholders. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)’s ADR UK team will provide support for this part of the project, including data expertise and by facilitating connections with data owners, data users, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
The successful project team will refine the final agreed set of deliverables with ADR UK and UKRI. Applicants are encouraged to look at the HM Revenue and Customs Research Future Strategy as a recent example of a similar scoping project.
The project will explore and set out what a potential future research agenda in this space could look like. This could include:
- convening a series of workshops with relevant stakeholders to co-identify persistent and future trends, policy challenges and evidence gaps that require further investigation
- co-developing future research directions and articulating future questions
- exploring how administrative data and quantitative data can be appropriately linked with qualitative data to enrich the evidence base
- setting out the capacity-building, resource, and data infrastructure requirements needed to support future investments in this space
We are aware that terminology in this area can be contentious or sensitive and welcome fresh approaches to framing relevant issues, including those that draw on the views of people with lived experience as necessary.
Requirements
Place-based approaches
You must focus on places and communities in the UK. You can include a comparative or international dimension, but any findings, insights, and recommendations must have a bearing on the UK context.
For the purposes of this funding opportunity, we define place-based approaches as those describing a diverse range of activities that target a place or location, to build on local strengths or respond to a complex social and economic problem(s).
Applicants are free to define their own approach to ‘place’ but must provide rationales for this choice, explaining how the proposed activity and methodology will address place-based economic inactivity in the UK.
We recognise that place-based studies are not always easily generalisable to wider populations. You must, however, outline the transferability of your research findings and learning to other contexts within the UK. This is especially important if your research is conducted in a single locality or a small number of research sites.
Whole system approach
The successful project will incorporate a multi-dimensional approach to the phenomenon that goes beyond a focus on individual determinants and factors influencing economic (in)activity.
Partnerships
Partnerships and collaborative working are an integral component to this funding opportunity.
Preference will be given to proposals that include appropriate team members and project partners from outside of academia. You should check UKRI eligibility rules to ensure roles and costings are correct.
We welcome proposals that involve people with lived experiences (PWLE) of ill health, disability, and informal caregiving. Where proposals include PWLE, you should explain how you will be involved in the design, leadership, governance, and delivery of the project. You must ensure that the involvement of PWLE is fully costed and offer remuneration.
Due to the award’s short duration (24 months), you must show evidence that foundational relationships with any non-academic project co-leads, team members, and project partners are already in place, with a clearly articulated and agreed approach to collaborative working.
A non-exhaustive list of non-academic team members and partners that could be involved (subject to UKRI eligibility rules) include:
- government departments
- devolved administrations
- regional and local governments
- other public sector organisations
- employers (public, private and third sector)
- Workers’ representative organisations, including trade unions and non-union representatives
- private sector organisations, including individual businesses
- member organisations, including local government associations, and business and industry representatives
- professional organisations and bodies such as, the Health and Care Professions Council, the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
- third sector organisations
- social enterprises
- community groups
- individual specialists (professional and non-professional)
Stakeholder engagement
The successful project will be expected to engage meaningfully with a diverse range of stakeholders from the academic, policy, and practitioner communities across different disciplines, policy areas, and the public and private sectors.
You should include details of your proposed stakeholder engagement plans, and your approach(es) to working with stakeholders.
Innovate UK Business Connect can help you to connect with business and experts outside your usual networks.
Interdisciplinarity
Proposals are expected to be interdisciplinary in nature and team composition, with the successful project embedding insights and approaches from across different disciplines to create new shared knowledge and having a coherent, interdisciplinary work programme.
Staff and expertise can be drawn from any discipline supported by UKRI, including:
- environmental sciences
- engineering and physical sciences
- economic and social sciences
- computational and statistical sciences
- applied mathematical modelling
- the arts, design and humanities
- biosciences
- medical sciences
We particularly welcome proposals that cross over multiple UKRI research council disciplinary boundaries, and which employ mixed-methods research approaches.
New insights and relevance to policy and practice
The successful project will go beyond updated descriptions of place-based economic (in)activity to provide new, actionable evidence. It will generate clear guidance and practical recommendations that policymakers and practitioners can easily adapt and apply to their local context(s).
To ensure proposals are feasible and grounded in local priorities and lived experience, you are strongly encouraged to engage with local stakeholders in a small number of places in the development of bids. Engagement with communities must be equitable and your plans should demonstrate that you have identified their needs and interests.
Your team
We are seeking an interdisciplinary leadership team led by a director, or two co-directors working as a job-share, based at institutions eligible for UKRI funding.
The project’s core team should have suitable capability and capacity to undertake both substantive interdisciplinary research and sustained engagement and collaboration on research and knowledge exchange areas.
The core team should include people at different career stages and from different disciplines, who collectively offer:
- thematic expertise within and beyond academia
- the ability to successfully manage interdisciplinary teams and deliver interdisciplinary work packages
- an ability to bring together diverse expertise within projects, conceptually, methodologically, and theoretically
- specialist expertise to support the desired outcomes and knowledge mobilisation
The project core team will be responsible for the formation of a suitable advisory structure. Proposals should include detail of the advisory group, including academic and non-academic members, that will support the project’s work programme and oversee the development of key activities. UKRI reserves the right to attend and observe advisory group meetings.
The successful grant holder will provide project progress updates to UKRI twice a year. The formats and timings of these updates will be agreed between the grant holder and UKRI within three months of the award start date.
Duration
The duration of this award is 24 months.
Projects must start by 12 January 2026.
Funding available
The total FEC of your project can be up to £1.2 million.
UKRI will fund 80% of the FEC. Applicants are encouraged to bid for the maximum funding available.
Funding is for a single award.
What we will not fund
Associated studentships are not eligible for inclusion.
A proposal will be automatically excluded from consideration if it does not:
- start by 12 January 2026 at the latest
- last for 24 months
- primarily focus on the UK
- fit the scope of this funding opportunity
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
ESRC data infrastructure
ESRC supports a range of data infrastructures. Where relevant, we encourage applicants to consider whether the use of these resources could add value to the project. See Facilities and resources for information on finding and using ESRC datasets which are available across the UK.
Where relevant, details of datasets and infrastructure to be used in your project should be given in the Facilities section.
Data requirements
ESRC recognises the importance of data quality and provenance. Data generated, collected, or acquired by ESRC-funded research must be well-managed by the grant holder to enable their data to be exploited to the maximum potential for further research. See our research data policy for details and further information on data requirements. The requirements of the research data policy are a condition of ESRC research funding.
Where relevant, details on data management and sharing should be provided in the Data management and sharing section. See the importance of managing and sharing data and content for inclusion in a data management plan on the UK Data Service (UKDS) website for further guidance. We expect applicants to provide a summary of the points provided. The UKDS (datasharing@ukdataservice.ac.uk) will be pleased to advise applicants on the availability of data within the academic community and provide advice on data deposit requirements.
Research ethics
ESRC requires that the research we support is designed and conducted in such a way that it meets ethical principles and is subject to proper professional and institutional oversight in terms of research governance. We have agreed a framework for research ethics that all submitted proposals must comply with. Read further details about the Framework for Research Ethics and guidance on compliance.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary.
Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
Find further guidance and information about TR&I, including where you can find additional support.
