NICRF COSTING POLICY LAUNCHED 1 April 2016
Why does the NICRF charge for use?
The NICRF is funded for its first five years (2012-2017) by the Wellcome Trust/Wolfson Foundation. During this time, it is expected to become self-funding to allow continuity of its services.  To do this, charges will be levied for all research activity that uses NICRF space, staff, equipment and consumables. This document summarises the revised NICRF charges which will be implemented on 1 April 2016 (and will subsequently be reviewed annually) for new studies accessing NICRF. We would encourage Investigators to discuss these charges with the NICRF team as early as possible and to incorporate appropriate costs into part of grant applications.  
What are the charges?
The NICRF is open to a wide range of users conducting many different kinds of study.  We have reviewed usage of the NICRF over its first three years.  In order to reflect the diverse range of requests to use the NICRF, we have revised our NICRF charges into four tiers:
	CATEGORY 1
Pilot	CATEGORY 2
Capability /Capacity Research	CATEGORY 3
Investigator Led 	CATEGORY 4
Industry Led2	
Study Set-up Fee	£50	£100	£500	£750	
Usage of Clinical Room (per hour1)	£5 per hour	£15 per hour
	£25 per hour
£150 per day
O-O-H £30 per hour3
	£50 per hour
£350 per day
O-O-H £65 per hour3	
Lab Processing
(when no usage of Clinical Room)
	£5 per hour	£5 per hour	£5 per hour	£10 per hour	
Lab Storage
(when no usage of Clinical room)	£5 per box 
per month	£5 per box 
per month	£5 per box 
per month	£5 per box 
per month
	
1Clinical room costs include use of BASIC consumables*, processing laboratory and desk space. 2 VAT will be charged.  
3Out-of-Hours (O-O-H) refers to room usage outside core opening hours (Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm)
 
DEFINITIONS OF CATEGORIES
Category 1 – Pilot studies with limited or no funding
It is acknowledged that the overarching goal of the NICRF is to play an active role in encouraging increased levels of clinical research activity in Northern Ireland.  It is therefore recognised that to achieve this goal we need to support pilot data collections that will be used for larger grant applications.  To be a sustainable facility, the NICRF can currently only support less than 5% of overall annual activity in this category. To ensure equity of access to the NICRF for pilot studies there will be an upper limit per PI that the NICRF will support.  PhD students will be considered under this category provided the study in which the student is embedded does not meet criteria of other categories. The following criteria will be applied when judging whether a study can be categorised as Pilot.
•	The study will usually have less than 50 study visits in total and study visits will usually be less than 3 hours
•	The study will usually last less than 6 months from date of first patient visit
•	The study will not meet the criteria of category 2, 3, or 4
•	Basic consumables will be provided by the NICRF* 
•	Other consumables (including butterflies, blood bottles etc) will be provided by the study team
•	The PI of the pilot study will usually have not run a pilot study in the NICRF in the previous 2 years and usually will have conducted a funded study (Category 2, 3 and 4) prior to support of additional pilot studies.  PhD student projects are usually be exempt from this rule.
For these studies there will be a one-off set-up fee and a small hourly rate. This hourly rate will include reception services, the use of a clinical room and the use of general consumables within that room. The study team will be responsible for providing specialist consumables.  Out-of-hours activity will usually NOT be supported in this category.  Also PIs should recognise that during busy periods other categories will get priority in room allocation.
Category 2 – Capability / Capacity Research 
In line with the goal of encouraging increased levels of clinical research activity in Northern Ireland, the NICRF also recognise the need to support early career researchers (ECR) as well as enable researchers (especially ECR) to collaborate on active UK multi-centre Investigator-led studies.  To be a sustainable facility, the NICRF can only currently support less than 10% overall annual activity in this category.  Applications in this category will meet the following criteria.
•	The PI will usually be an ECR
•	Basic consumables will be provided by the NICRF* 
•	Other consumables (including butterflies, blood bottles etc will be provided by the study team
•	Related grant applications will usually not have been led by Northern Ireland investigators and/or there will be clear evidence from Northern Ireland-led applications that full NICRF costs were requested in original grant application.
•	Depending on the number of applications made in this category, the Director may need to limit the number of applications per PI under the Capacity Research category. 
For these studies, there will be a one-off set-up fee and the second will be an hourly rate. This hourly rate will include reception services, the use of a clinical room and the use of general consumables within that room. The study team will be responsible for providing specialist consumables. Out-of-hours activity will usually not be supported in this category. 
Category 3 – Investigator-led, grant-funded projects
This category will usually include projects supported by non-industry funding and/or charity funding.  To be a sustainable facility, we encourage applications in this category.  There will be a one-off set-up fee and a standard non-industry hourly rate. This hourly rate will include reception services, the use of a clinical room and the use of basic consumables* within that room. The study team will be responsible for providing all other consumables. If the study requires specialist equipment there may be an additional charge to support servicing and maintenance costs linked to the specific equipment.  A reduced daily rate is available. Out-of-hours activity will be charged at an additional rate.
Category 4 – Projects initiated by an industry organisation
This category will include projects supported by industry and / or other industry organisations.  To be a sustainable facility, we encourage applications in this category.   For these studies, there be an industry set-up fee and an industry hourly rate will be charged.  VAT will also be charged.  This hourly rate will include reception services, the use of a clinical room and the use of basic consumables within that room.  The study team will be responsible for providing all other consumables.  If the study requires specialist equipment, there may be an additional charge to support servicing and maintenance costs linked to the specific equipment. A reduced daily rate is available. Out-of-hours activity will be charged at an additional rate.
How are payments collected?
All charges will be agreed before the study commences in the NICRF and the researcher will be required to sign a Service Level Agreement giving details of the account to which NICRF services will be charged.