7.1. OUH holds the main contract with the DHSC for the NIHR Oxford BRC. The Trust therefore has legal and financial responsibility for delivering the funded programme, with the University of Oxford as its formal partner. The Oxford BRC is one of 20 BRCs across England and supports high-quality early translational (bench-to-bedside) and experimental research across 15 research themes and six ‘enabling hubs’.
7.2. The original award for the current Oxford BRC was £86.6m for the period of 1 December 2022 – 30 November 2027. In March 2024 the award was extended by four months until 31 March 2028.
7.3. The BRC supported 311 (19%) of the 1667 OUH-hosted clinical research studies that were active during 2025-26. This included salary support for investigators associated with the project, use of the BRC facilities or direct project funding. A small number of examples of recent high-impact research enabled by the BRC are provided in the Appendix.
7.4. The BRC also supported 20 career development awards across a range of career stages (internships, pre-doctoral fellowships, post-doctoral awards and senior research fellowships). The pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships are all supported with one-to-one mentoring.
7.5. In June 2026 NIHR announced their intention to fund a further round of BRCs with funding from 1 April 2028 to 31 March 2033. The deadline for the outline application is 17 September 2026 and the full application in March 2027. Researchers from across OUH and the University of Oxford have submitted expressions of interest for new themes to be included in the next BRC. Notably, for the first time, Trusts' performance in setting-up clinical trials will be taken into account in any BRC funding awarded to them, with a reduction of up to 10% (equating to ~£5m for the maximum £50m bid) for those falling below a target of 95% meeting the 90-day site set up metric.
7.6. NIHR now require organisations that host multiple NIHR infrastructure awards to submit a single Public and Patient Involvement, Engagement and Participation (PPIEP) strategy which sets out a shared, strategic approach for the infrastructure awards it holds – for OUH this is the Oxford BRC and Oxford CRF. This will be supported by a specific action plan that feeds into the institutional strategy. It has