Longitudinal Population Study Grants (Closed)

These grants provide support for researchers who want to establish, maintain or enhance longitudinal population studies (LPS) for the benefit of the wider scientific community.

This scheme is now closed. Read an update about why we've taken this decision from Mike Turner, Director of Science.

We will continue to support research that maximises the value and improves the usefulness of LPS through our fellowships, Investigator Awards and Collaborative Awards. Find out more about these schemes.

Scheme at a glance

This scheme is now closed

Lead applicant career stage:: Leading a research programme
Administering organisation location:: UK, Low- or middle-income countries
Funding amount:: Up to £5 million for a Core support grant. Up to £1.5 million for an Enhancing value grant.
Funding duration:: Up to 5 years

Who can apply

Longitudinal Population Study (LPS) grants are for teams of researchers to do one or more of the following:

create or maintain LPS to answer important scientific questions (Core support grant)
undertake a pilot study to determine the feasibility of setting up a new LPS (Core support grant)
develop approaches that enhance the value of LPS (Enhancing value grant)
improve the usefulness of outputs from LPS (Enhancing value grant).

To be eligible, you and any coapplicants should be essential to the proposed activities and have:

proven expertise in your field
a track record in obtaining grant funding
an academic or research post (or equivalent).

We would normally expect applicants to have a salary, or a guarantee of a salary, for the duration of the award period. If your employment contract states that you must get your salary from external grant funding, and you are based in the UK or a low- or middle-income country, you can ask us for this in your application. Your host organisation must confirm details about your contract.

You should be based at a host organisation in the UK or an eligible low- or middle-income country. Your coapplicants can be based anywhere in the world.

Your proposed LPS should usually be based in the UK or a low- or middle-income country. If it is not, please contact Bruna Galobardes to discuss your eligibility before you apply.

There are two types of funding you can apply for.

1. Core support grants (up to £5 million)

These grants support new and existing LPS, such as cohorts, panel surveys and biobanks. The grants may include some funds for answering scientific questions, but the majority of funds should be for core costs.

We also accept applications for pilot studies to determine the feasibility of setting up a new LPS. The planned outcome of the pilot study should be a funding application to create a new LPS.

Your LPS must:

be designed to answer a wide range of scientific questions in the UK or low- and middle-income countries
have, or plan to collect, data on more than 5,000 participants at baseline.

In your proposal, you should be able to demonstrate that your LPS has:

a clear aim with scientific impact and potential
robust leadership, management, training and governance structures
effective recruitment, rigorous data and sample quality, and data governance
opportunities for researchers outside of the core team to access and use it
links with other data sources where possible
meaningful engagement with participants, the wider public, industry, policy makers and practitioners.

If your proposed LPS is based in a low- or middle-income country, you will need to demonstrate that it meets the highest achievable quality standards for the context in which it operates.

2. Enhancing value grants (up to £1.5 million)

These grants support approaches that maximise the value of LPS.

This includes:

establishing governance structures, eg to make LPS data more discoverable and widely used
developing new methodologies to collect and analyse LPS data
bringing together data from across LPS, and other sources, to create new data resources.

Examples of activities we’ll consider include (but are not limited to):

creating networks of LPS
ways to improve analysis of complex data from LPS
developing new data collection methods
regulatory or organisational changes that support data sharing
research that explores how multiple datasets can be linked efficiently
understanding the acceptability and feasibility of linking data from a variety of sources
establishing governance structures allowing LPS to link to additional data sources
developing and championing approaches to allow data interoperability (the exchange and sharing of information between different systems), accessibility and analysis
methods for integrating data from different sources.

Data to be linked can include:

health, social care and education records
disease registries
wearable technology
geocoding
climate data
social media feeds
data from other types of studies eg clinical trials
commercial data eg shopping habits.

Who can't apply

We won’t consider proposals for:

small LPS (under 5,000 participants at baseline)
time-limited LPS that aim to answer specific research questions within the duration of a research grant
disease-specific LPS which only include participants with a specific condition or set of conditions
applications that only make use of LPS data.

You can apply for this type of funding through our other funding schemes (eg Investigator Awards in Science, Collaborative Awards in Science and our fellowship schemes).

An LPS grant offers up to five years of support.

There are two levels of funding you can apply for:

Core support grants up to £5 million
Enhancing value grants up to £1.5 million.

Depending on how much you apply for, you may need to contact us first. See the 'How to apply' section on this page.

We don't usually consider applications for less than £75,000.

Support includes:

- Staff salaries should be appropriate to skills, responsibilities and expertise. You should ask your host organisation to use their salary scales to calculate these costs, which should include:
  
  basic salary
  employer’s contributions, including any statutory obligations (eg National Insurance contributions if you’re based in the UK) and pension scheme costs
  Apprentice Levy charges for UK-based salaries
  any incremental progression up the salary scale
  locally recognised allowances such as London allowance.
  
  You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed: if you don’t know what the pay award is yet then use our inflation rate.
  
  From Year 2 onwards, you should use your organisation's current pay rates. We'll provide a separate inflation allowance for salary inflation costs.
  
  Find out more about people working on a Wellcome grant.
  
  We may make a contribution towards the salary of departmental technicians funded by Research England and its equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. You will need to provide a full audit record of their time on your project.
We will pay for the materials and consumables you need to maintain the LPS, including:
- laboratory chemicals and materials (eg reagents, isotopes, peptides, enzymes, antibodies, gases, proteins, cell/tissue/bacterial culture, plasticware and glassware)
- associated charges for shipping, delivery and freight
- project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting.
You can ask for funds to buy animals if they are essential to your project. We will also fund the charge-out rates for animal house facilities if your organisation uses full economic costing methodology. These costs include:
- running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
- appropriate estates costs
- cage and equipment depreciation costs, but not building depreciation costs.
We may not pay the full charge-out rate for an animal house facility if we've provided significant funding towards the infrastructure and/or core support of the facility.

If your organisation doesn’t use full economic costing methodology to establish charge-out rates for animal house facilities, you can ask for funds to cover:
- the cost of buying animals
- running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
- staff costs, eg contributions towards the salaries of animal house technicians.
We won’t provide estates or depreciation costs.
Equipment purchase

You can ask for items of equipment that are essential to your proposed research project. Costs may include purchase, delivery, installation, maintenance and training, where necessary.

We will cover VAT and import duties if:
- the usual UK exemptions on equipment used for medical research don’t apply
- you’re applying from a non-UK organisation, and you can show these costs can’t be recovered.
You can ask for larger items of equipment if they're not available at your host organisation.

If a complete piece of equipment costs £100,000 or more, we expect a contribution of at least 25 per cent from the host organisation or another source.

In some cases we may expect a larger contribution. We’ll discuss this with you after we’ve assessed your application.

Contributions can include benefits in kind, such as refurbishment or the underwriting of a key support post.

Equipment maintenance

We will cover maintenance costs for equipment if:
- you are requesting it in your application
- it is existing equipment that is:
  funded by us or another source
  essential to the proposed research project
  more than five years old
  cost effective to keep maintaining it.
We won’t cover maintenance costs for equipment if there is a mechanism in place to recoup these costs through access charges.

Computer equipment

We will cover the cost of one personal computer or laptop per person up to £1,500.

We won't pay for:
- more expensive items, unless you can justify them
- installation or training costs.
You can ask for the cost of access to shared equipment or facilities if they’re essential to your research project. These may include materials and consumables, plus a proportion of:
- maintenance and service contracts
- staff time costs for dedicated technical staff employed to operate the equipment or facility.
We don’t cover the costs of:
- estates and utilities
- depreciation or insurance
- other staff eg contributions towards departmental technical, administrative and management staff time.
If the facilities or equipment were paid for by a Wellcome grant, you can only ask for access charges if:
- the grant has ended
- any support for running costs and maintenance contracts has ended.
You can ask for overheads if your grant will be based at a:
- university outside the UK or Republic of Ireland
- research organisation that does not receive core funding for overheads
- charitable or not-for-profit organisation
- small or medium-sized commercial organisation.
You can also ask for overheads on any part of your grant that is sub-contracted to any of the organisations listed above.

If you’re based at a UK university you can’t ask for overheads for sub-contracted activity if your university will include the sub-contracted funding in its annual report to the UK Charity Research Support Fund.

Overheads can include:
- estates, for example building and premises
- non-project dedicated administrative and support staff
- administration, for example finance, library, and room hire.
The total cost for overheads should not be more than:
- 20% of the direct research costs if you’re based in a low- or middle-income country
- 15% of the direct research costs if you’re based anywhere else.
These costs must directly support the activity funded by the grant.

How to apply for these costs

In your grant application you must:
- give a full breakdown of costs (you can't ask for a percentage of the research costs)
- explain why these costs are necessary for your research
- include a letter from the finance director of your host organisation, or the sub-contracted organisation, confirming that the breakdown is a true representation of the costs incurred.
Travel costs

Conference attendance

You can ask for a contribution towards the costs of attending scientific and academic meetings to publicise the LPS, including the costs to offset the carbon emissions of your travel. The limits are:
- Lead applicant – £2,000 a year
- Staff employed on your grant – £1,000 each a year
You’ll need to specify the amount you’re requesting for each person.

You can also ask for costs to cover caring responsibilities if any staff employed on your grant attend a conference. This includes childcare and any other caring responsibility they have, provided:
- Wellcome is paying their salary
- the conference is directly related to the research
- the caring costs are over and above what they'd normally pay for care
- the conference organiser and their employing organisation are unable to cover the costs.
You can ask for up to £1,000 per person for each conference.

Collaborative travel

You can ask for travel and subsistence costs for collaborative visits for you and any staff employed on your grant. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration.

Other travel

We may pay for other essential visits, eg to facilities, for sample collection and for fieldwork. You can include subsistence costs.

Carbon offset costs

This is a new policy. It applies to all types of travel costs Wellcome provides.

You can ask for:
- the cost of low carbon travel where practical, even if it's more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying)
- project-related resources or activities that provide an alternative to travel, such as video conferencing, communication and file-sharing software
- costs to offset the carbon emissions of the journeys you make.
We won't pay for the core infrastructure that your host organisation should provide, unless you're eligible to ask for these costs under our overheads policy. Examples of these costs include:
- organisation-wide video conferencing packages
- high-speed broadband
- HD screens.
See our carbon offset policy for travel for information on what you and your organisation need to do.

Subsistence costs

If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (eg refreshments or newspapers).

If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.

If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.

If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.

If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £10 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.

If you’re away for more than 12 months, we will pay the costs of your housing. You should discuss your needs with your administering and host organisations.

The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. Please contact us if you need help calculating the costs.
- If you will be away more than 12 months, we will provide overseas allowances for your partner and any dependants if they are travelling with you.
  
  If you will be away for 12 months or less and can justify why your partner and dependants must travel with you, we may provide overseas allowances for them.
  
  We define your partner as the person:
  
  you’re married to
  you’re not married to but with whom you’ve been in a relationship for at least a year
  
  and
  
  you live with at the same permanent address and share some form of joint financial commitment with (eg a mortgage).
We cover fieldwork costs if they’re essential and you can justify them. Costs can include:
- survey and data collection, including communication and data collection services and any associated costs such as essential field materials, travel costs and language translation services
- the purchase, hire and running costs of vehicles dedicated to your project
- expenses for subjects and volunteers, including the recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel costs
- statistical analysis.
You can ask for other fieldwork costs that aren’t listed here, but you’ll need to justify them.
We will add an inflation allowance to your award.

How we calculate your inflation allowance

Your inflation allowance is based on your total eligible costs and the duration of the award. You'll receive the following allowance if the costs in your application are in pounds sterling, euros or US dollars.

Award duration (in months) Inflation allowance
0-12 0.0%
13-24 1.0%
25-36 2.0%
37-48 3.0%
49-60 4.1%
61-72 5.1%
73-84 6.2%

These rates are calculated using compound inflation at 2.0% a year from Year 2 onwards.

If your costs are in any other currency, we will use an inflation allowance that reflects the inflation rate of the country where the host organisation is based.

What to include in your application

The costs in your application must be based on current known costs, excluding inflation.

You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed; if you don’t know what the pay award is yet then use our inflation rate.

Wellcome's studentship stipend scales for non-clinical/basic science PhD studentships include an annual increase for inflation.
If your organisation receives block funding, you can ask them to cover your open access article processing charges.

If you're at an organisation that doesn't receive block grant funding, we’ll supplement your grant when your paper has been accepted for publication.

You can't ask for these charges in your grant application.
If you need to carry out clinical trials or research using NHS patients or facilities, we will cover some of the research costs.

Annex A of the guidelines for attributing the costs of health and social care research and development (AcoRD) sets out the costs we cover, and which costs should be funded through the Department of Health in England, or its equivalent in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. If you're based in the Republic of Ireland, we would expect you to adhere to the spirit of these principles.

Further information on our clinical trials policy.
If you already have an LPS, you can ask for costs to meet the criteria we’ll use to assess your application. Costs can include:
- setting up an advisory or governance board
- making data available to other researchers
- costs associated with making the resource discoverable and accessible to the research community (such as developing a project website, creating a variable code book, or setting up a data access committee)
- any other reasonable expense that you can justify.
Read our Longitudinal population studies strategy [PDF 166KB] for more information about our assessment criteria.
Costs you may ask for (you will have to justify these costs in your application):
- specialist publications that are relevant to the research and not available in institutional libraries
- consultancy fees
- expenses for subjects and volunteers – includes recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel, as well as interviewee expenses
- reasonable research-associated costs related to the feedback of health-related findings but not any healthcare-associated costs
- costs associated with developing an outputs management plan
- questionnaires, recruitment material, newsletters etc for clinical, epidemiological and qualitative research studies
- public engagement materials where dissemination (including printing and publishing) is a key activity of the project
- recruitment, advertising and interviewee travel costs for staff to be employed on the grant
- formal transferable skills and personal development training, including the International Funders Award
- purchase, hire and running costs of project-dedicated vehicles.
Costs we won’t pay:
- estates costs – such as building and premises costs, basic services and utilities. This also includes phone, postage, photocopying and stationery, unless you can justify these within a clinical or epidemiological study.*
- page charges and the cost of colour prints
- research, technical and administrative staff whose time is shared across several projects and isn’t supported by an audit record*
- PhD stipends
- charge-out costs for major facilities* – departmental technical and administrative services, and use of existing equipment
- cleaning, waste and other disposal costs*
*We will fund these costs in the case of animal-related research.
- indirect costs – this includes general administration costs such as personnel, finance, library, room hire and some departmental services
- office furniture, such as chairs, desks, filing cabinets, etc.
- clothing such as lab coats, shoes, protective clothing
- non-research related activities, eg catering, room and venue hire for staff parties, team-building events and social activities
- indemnity insurance (insurance cover against claims made by subjects or patients associated with a research programme)
- ethics reviews, unless you are in a low- or middle-income country
- radiation protection costs.
Costs grantholders can claim on biomedical science research grants.

Award duration (in months)	Inflation allowance
0-12	0.0%
13-24	1.0%
25-36	2.0%
37-48	3.0%
49-60	4.1%
61-72	5.1%
73-84	6.2%

You can also apply for Research Enrichment funding to increase the impact of your work through activities in public engagement and diversity and inclusion.

What we don’t offer

If you're a coapplicant from a developed country outside the UK, we don't offer research expenses to your host organisation.

We don't fund overheads unless they're included on this page.

Stages of application

This scheme is now closed.

Read our strategy

Read our Longitudinal population studies strategy [PDF 166KB] for more information about the criteria we’ll use to assess your application.

Find out more about our longitudinal population studies work.
Submit your preliminary application

You should provide a supporting statement from your host organisation that outlines their commitment to the long-term sustainability of the study.

View a Sample preliminary application form for Longitudinal Population Study Grants [PDF 451KB].

Get some tips to help you write a Wellcome grant application.
Review of preliminary applications

We’ll assess your eligibility and suitability and give you a decision within four weeks of the preliminary deadline. If your preliminary application is successful, we’ll invite you to submit a full application.
Submit your full application to your host organisation for approval

Complete your full application form on Grant Tracker. Submit it to the 'authorised organisational approver' at your host organisation for approval. Make sure you leave enough time for the approver to review and submit your application before the deadline. The approver may ask you to make changes to your application.

If your proposal involves clinical research using NHS resources, check if you need to upload a SoECAT form with your full application.
Host organisation reviews your application and submits it to us

Your application must be submitted by 17:00 (GMT) on the deadline day.
External written peer review

We'll seek written comments from external expert reviewers. Unattributed comments will be sent to you before the committee meeting.

If you’re applying for an Enhancing value grant, you’ll have the opportunity to respond to the comments in writing.
Interviews

If you’re applying for a Core support grant and are invited to submit a full application, you’ll be invited to an interview.

At the interview, you’ll be asked to make a five-minute presentation and answer questions from the Longitudinal Population Studies Committee. Interviews take place at the Wellcome offices in London. We can pay your travel and accommodation costs. Get advice on how to prepare for a Wellcome funding interview.
Decision

The Longitudinal Population Studies Committee will review your full application.

We aim to notify you of our decision within four to six weeks of the committee meeting.

Disabled applicants

If you are disabled or have a chronic health condition, we can support you with the application process.

Dates

This scheme is now closed.

More information

Find out about how we've worked with the funding community to develop principles and obligations setting out what we expect from those responsible for clinical training, trainees and funders across the UK.

Scheme at a glance

This scheme is now closed

Eligibility and suitability

Who can apply

Who can't apply

What we offer

Visa and work permit costs

Equipment purchase

Equipment maintenance

Computer equipment

How to apply for these costs

Travel costs

Collaborative travel

Other travel

Carbon offset costs

Subsistence costs

Carbon offset costs

How we calculate your inflation allowance

What to include in your application

What we don’t offer

How to apply

Stages of application

Read our strategy

Submit your preliminary application

Review of preliminary applications

Submit your full application to your host organisation for approval

Host organisation reviews your application and submits it to us

External written peer review

Interviews

Decision

Disabled applicants

Dates

More information

Grants awarded

Contact us

Useful documents