UKRI Trust and Confidence in Policing R&I Consortium: One £2 Million Award to Build Real-Time Measures of Public Trust in UK Policing, Closing 27 October 2026

UKRI Trust and Confidence in Policing R&I Consortium: One £2 Million Award to Build Real-Time Measures of Public Trust in UK Policing, Closing 27 October 2026

Britain already measures public trust in the police. The Crime Survey for England and Wales does it. So does the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s Public Perceptions Tracker, and so do the local crime surveys run by Police and Crime Commissioners. UKRI’s position, stated plainly in this pre-announcement, is that all of those instruments produce a snapshot rather than a signal — they cannot tell a force whether the thing it did last month in a particular neighbourhood moved the needle, and they systematically under-hear children, victims and survivors of abuse, and justice-involved people.

This funding opportunity puts up to £2 million behind fixing that. One Research and Innovation Consortium will be established, for 36 months, to invent measures of trust and confidence that update in something close to real time, that are cheap and scalable enough for a police force to actually use, and that reach the groups conventional survey methods miss. Alongside the measurement work, the consortium must run pilots in at least four areas that test specific policing interventions, so the new instruments are validated against real activity rather than in the abstract.

The page went live on 31 July 2026 as a pre-announcement. The opportunity opens on 1 September 2026 at 9:00am UK time and closes on 27 October 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. That is an eight-week application window for a consortium bid — which, as this guide argues below, means the real work starts now.

Key details at a glance

What UKRI is actually buying

Read the aims literally. There are two: develop novel, engaging and dynamic methods that let police and their partners get real-time feedback on trust and confidence; and test new and innovative ways of improving trust and confidence in the police. The first is instrument-building. The second is intervention-testing. A bid that does only one of them is answering half the question.

The scope narrative explains why both halves are needed together. UKRI wants standardised measures that give police real-time data to guide interventions — but a measure only earns its keep if it can detect the effect of something a force did. Hence the pilots: in at least four areas, the consortium works with local forces and stakeholders to identify specific interventions or approaches, deploys the new measures around them, and builds evidence about what works well and less well in building and sustaining trust.

The examples UKRI gives for what those pilots might test are concrete: use of technologies, volunteer police, community engagement and public contact methods, the impact of social media campaigns, or new tactics and protocols with ethical policing at their centre. None of these is prescribed. What is prescribed is the priority population. The consortium must prioritise capturing the experiences and perceptions of children under 18, and of victims of violence against women and girls. Other underrepresented groups should be included, prioritised jointly with local forces, with the selection detailed and justified. At the same time, the measures are expected to give a comprehensive and dynamic reading of trust across the British public more generally — so this is not a niche-only instrument.

The intended endpoint is a Public Confidence in Policing Playbook, to which the consortium contributes by December 2029.

Who can apply, and what a credible core team looks like

Standard UKRI organisational eligibility applies. The project lead must sit at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. Individuals from UK-based businesses, third sector organisations and government bodies can be project co-leads under UKRI’s business, third sector and government body co-lead policy, and international researchers can join as project co-lead (international); anyone else overseas, or any UK partner not at an approved organisation, goes on as a project partner.

Beyond formal eligibility, UKRI is unusually specific about the mix of expertise the core team must collectively hold:

• Core social science leadership with genuine depth in the relevant disciplines, policy challenges and evidence needs.
• Thematic and/or place-based expertise reaching beyond the social sciences and beyond academia, reflecting the communities the consortium will engage — explicitly including people with lived experience.
• Credible ability to engage and collaborate with diverse stakeholders and research users across a range of activities and outputs.
• Ability to integrate diverse expertise conceptually, methodologically and theoretically.
• Ability to deliver a complex project on time, given the variety of activities and outputs.
• Specialist functions: programme and project management, finance, communications, administrative support, and knowledge mobilisation.

That last bullet is the one academic teams most often treat as an afterthought. Here it is written into the requirements. A consortium running a devolved funding pot, four or more pilot sites, an advisory group and a steering-group relationship with UKRI needs real programme management capacity costed into the bid, not a fractional research administrator.

UKRI notes that demand management is not currently being applied, but reserves the right to introduce limits on the number of applications per organisation if interest exceeds what the assessment process can handle. Watch the page for changes when it opens on 1 September.

The flexible fund: 40% of your budget, and the thing most bids will get wrong

The defining structural feature of an R&I Consortium is the devolved funding pot. You should budget at least 40% of the consortium’s full economic cost to the flexible fund. UKRI funds 80% of that FEC, as with the rest of the award. Flexible fund costs go into the application under “Directly Incurred: Other”. The pot is ring-fenced and cannot be vired to any other purpose.

The flexible fund exists to support small research projects and pilots run by researchers outside the core consortium team, at any organisation eligible for UKRI funding. UKRI lists its intended uses: co-designing tools and approaches with communities and less well heard groups; trialling different tools and approaches to test their capability; working with underrepresented groups and police partners to understand what does and does not work; and prototype or instrument design. Exceptionally, certain project co-leads may be funded at 100% FEC where that complies with UKRI and ESRC co-lead policy — but those exceptional costs must come out of the flexible pot.

What the assessors will look for is governance. You must define and justify your objectives for the fund, and explain how it will be operationalised and governed: how sub-calls will be commissioned through a robust peer review process, and how allocation will stay fair and transparent within UKRI’s principles of assessment and decision making. UKRI expects to see example projects and activity types at application stage, and states that the UKRI Safer Streets team expects to participate in designing flexible fund opportunities and selecting projects. Accountability for correct usage sits with the project lead.

Treat this as designing a miniature funding programme inside your grant. Sketch the call cycle, the assessment panel composition, conflict-of-interest handling, turnaround times, and how a community organisation with no grant-writing infrastructure could realistically win an award from it.

What will not be funded

UKRI is explicit about exclusions, and each one rules out a recognisable type of bid:

• Associated studentships are not eligible for inclusion.
• Conventional large-scale surveys and public opinion polls — the whole point is that these already exist and do not solve the problem.
• Research making a purely theoretical or methodological contribution to academic debates. Methodological innovation is welcome; methodological innovation that stops at the journal article is not.
• Projects not primarily focused on trust and confidence in UK policing. Adjacent work on trust in institutions generally, or on policing outcomes other than trust, will not fit.

Timeline, milestones and the delivery schedule you are signing up to

The application timeline is short:

• 31 July 2026 — pre-announcement published.
• August 2026 — webinar, exact date to be confirmed.
• 1 September 2026, 9:00am UK time — opportunity opens; full application guidance and assessment details published then.
• 27 October 2026, 4:00pm UK time — closing date.
• By 1 February 2027 — consortium must start.

The delivery timeline runs well beyond the award’s nominal 36 months of activity milestones, so read it carefully before committing:

• Consortium ready to mobilise projects from February 2027.
• Scoping of initial projects complete by July 2027.
• Tools and interventions developed and available for piloting by December 2027.
• Trial testing and refinement complete by March 2029.
• Contribution to the Public Confidence in Policing Playbook by December 2029.
• Project completion by March 2030.

Five months from award to a completed scoping phase is tight for a consortium that must also stand up an advisory group, a flexible fund process and relationships with at least four pilot areas. The strongest bids will show that the police and community partnerships already exist, rather than promising to build them after the money lands.

There is one more feature worth flagging: UKRI says there will be a proportionate review process towards the end of the award, and that dependent on the outcome, additional investment may be made available for further trialling or scaling. The £2 million is the entry ticket, not necessarily the ceiling.

Co-design, governance and the anti-extractive requirement

This opportunity contains a governance requirement that is stronger than the usual “we will engage stakeholders” language, and it is where a technically excellent bid can still lose.

Applications must include a co-design plan demonstrating how police and members of the target underrepresented communities have been, or will be, involved in designing the tools or approaches before deployment. UKRI adds that co-design must be genuine and documented, and that the application must describe the specific design decisions co-design will inform. That is a testable standard. “We will hold co-design workshops” does not meet it. “Workshops in months 2–4 will determine the response modality, the recall window, the consent model for under-18s and the wording of the trust items” does.

The partnerships must not be extractive. UKRI asks for a transparent, mutually beneficial approach in which the perspectives and priorities of seldom heard communities are respected and meaningfully integrated into outcomes — and notes that outcomes must work for both the community and the police. That dual-audience constraint is the intellectual heart of the challenge, and a bid that reads as advocacy for one side against the other will struggle.

Applicants must also set out the advisory group that will support the research and oversee key activities, including both academic and non-academic members. UKRI reserves the right to attend and observe advisory group meetings and to suggest members. Separately, the consortium will engage with the R&D MAP steering group established for this project, whose terms of reference include providing expert advice and direction on proceeding with or ceasing activity. Grant holders will provide regular and ad hoc progress reports.

Anyone accustomed to a light-touch responsive-mode grant should read that paragraph twice. This is a managed, mission-linked investment with an active funder.

How to apply and how to prepare between now and September

Applications go through the new UKRI Funding Service. Je-S cannot be used. Your organisation must be registered on the Funding Service, so check that before September rather than in the closing week. Full details on how to apply, and the assessment process, will be published when the opportunity opens on 1 September 2026 — the pre-announcement deliberately withholds assessment criteria, and everything on the page may change.

Practical preparation during August:

1. Attend the webinar. It is scheduled for August 2026 with the date to be confirmed, so monitor the opportunity page. For a single-award consortium call, the webinar is usually where the funder clarifies what it means by the priority groups and the pilot areas.
2. Lock down police partners. Four or more pilot areas, with named forces or Police and Crime Commissioners willing to identify interventions for testing, is the hardest thing to assemble in eight weeks. Start conversations before the call opens.
3. Line up community partners for the two priority populations. Working with under-18s and with victims and survivors of violence against women and girls carries genuine ethics, safeguarding and consent obligations. Involve organisations that already hold those relationships and that can co-sign the safeguarding approach.
4. Design the flexible fund as a product. Draft the sub-call text, the assessment process and the example projects now. It is 40% of the budget and it will be scrutinised.
5. Cost the delivery machinery honestly. Programme management, finance, communications and knowledge mobilisation are named requirements. Under-costing them to protect research FTE is a false economy in a consortium with this many moving parts.
6. Read the co-lead policies. The UKRI business, third sector and government body project co-lead guidance and the project co-lead (international) guidance determine who can hold funds and what costs are eligible. Both are linked from the opportunity page, and the 100% FEC exception routes through the flexible pot.

For costings and application writing, contact your research office first, allowing time for your institution’s internal submission process. Opportunity-specific questions go to [email protected]. Funding Service technical queries go to [email protected] or 01793 547490, with lines open Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5:00pm and Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm. UKRI asks that you name the council and opportunity in the subject line, include the application reference, and avoid emailing multiple mailboxes at once.

Frequently asked questions

How many awards will be made? One. A single Research and Innovation Consortium will be established.

Is the £2 million what we receive? No. The full economic cost of the project can be up to £2 million, and UKRI will fund 80% of the FEC. The same 80% rate applies to the flexible fund.

Can we apply now? No. This is a pre-announcement. The opportunity opens on 1 September 2026, when full application and assessment details will be published. The information currently on the page may change.

What are the assessment criteria? Not yet published. UKRI states that full details of the assessment process will be given when the funding opportunity launches.

Can international partners be involved? Yes. International researchers can be included as project co-lead (international), subject to the UKRI international co-lead policy. Other international collaborators, and UK partners not at approved organisations, are included as project partners.

Can we include PhD studentships? No. Associated studentships are not eligible for inclusion.

We run large-scale surveys. Can we scale up an existing instrument? Conventional large-scale surveys and public opinion polls will not be funded. The call is premised on the limitation that existing snapshot instruments — the Crime Survey for England and Wales, the IOPC Public Perceptions Tracker, PCC local crime surveys — do not give continuous, granular measurement. A proposal must offer something structurally different.

Is there money after the 36 months? Possibly. UKRI says a proportionate review will take place towards the end of the award, and that dependent on the outcome, additional investment may be made available for further trialling or scaling. No amount is stated.

Official links

• Opportunity page: Trust and confidence in policing: R&I Consortium — UK Research and Innovation
• Opportunity-specific enquiries: [email protected]
• UKRI Funding Service helpdesk: [email protected], 01793 547490

All dates, amounts and eligibility conditions above come from the UKRI opportunity page as published on 31 July 2026. Because this is a pre-announcement, UKRI states the information may change; verify every figure against the live page once the opportunity opens on 1 September 2026.