CRN North West London - Funding allocation report for 2023/24

NHS pay award funding 2022/23

To alleviate the cost pressures arising from the NHS pay award 2022-23, the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) North West London has been allocated additional funding of £453,408. We propose to distribute this additional funding among the partner organisations (POs) of the CRN North West London in proportion to their main funding allocations for the current financial year. Pay award cost pressures within the Core and Primary Care budgets of the CRN North West London will be managed through the vacancy factor and so no additional funding for this will be retained by the Host.

Table 1 – Distribution of additional NHS pay award funding in north west London

Funding 2023/24

For planning purposes and as indicated by the CRN Coordinating Centre, we assume that the same amount of Core funding will be awarded to the CRN North West London for 2023/24 as for the current financial year.

Table 2 - Funding estimate

Core allocation (excluding top-sliced elements)

Partner organisation funding

'Flat cash' proposal

As the current CRN host contract is due to expire in March 2024, we propose to maintain financial stability during the final year of the contract by adopting a 'flat cash' model of funding allocation. In this model, each partner organisation would receive the same amount of funding as in the current financial year. CRN’s Core allocation would also stay the same.

Please see Table 3 for funding amounts.

An additional uplift is expected in March 2023 and we will allocate this in support of RESET and recovery.

Fixed allocations

As in previous years, allocations to London Ambulance Service NHS Trust, Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust and Primary Care remain fixed in both models. CRN Core costs also remain fixed.

Funding for under-served population

The CRN is required to ring-fence at least 2% of its funding to support under-served populations. The last column in Table 3 shows the amounts that would require ring-fencing by each partner.

Transformation budget for Direct Delivery Team

We have received a Transformation budget for a Direct Delivery Team which remains the same (£757,576). This transformation budget was awarded to LCRNs in 2020-21 to establish a new workforce – CRN Direct Delivery Team - with the flexibility, capability and capacity to deliver priority research studies across broader settings, particularly outside of hospital settings. The transformation budget is managed by the CRN Host.

The CRN Executive Group agreed the funding principles for 2023-24 at meetings in November 2022 and February 2023.

Table 3 - 'Flat cash' proposal

Table 4 - 2023/24 allocations