10.2. For the 2025-26 financial year, the annual income and expenditure budget for R&D was set at £45 million, as shown below. This included £27 million received from the NIHR, mainly for hosting the Oxford BRC and block funding to support the workforce and infrastructure to support the delivery of portfolio studies.
10.3. High level breakdown of 2025-26 R&D budget:
10.4. At financial year end all major NIHR programme and smaller grants achieved a breakeven position and individual study income exceeded expenditure by £2.6 million.
| Research Funding type | Expenditure (£m) |
| NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) | 18 |
| NIHR Regional Research Delivery Network (RRDN) | 9 |
| NIHR Research Capability Funding (RCF) | 1 |
| Other income (commercial & non-commercial, incl. NIHR grants) | 17 |
| Total 45 |
10.5. NIHR RCF is awarded to help research-active NHS organisations to act flexibly and strategically to maintain research capacity and capability; support the appointment, development and retention of key staff undertaking people and patient-based research; and contribute towards the costs of hosting NIHR-funded or ‘adopted’ research that are not currently fully covered across NIHR’s programmes, and that are not met in other ways.
10.6. OUH received £580k of RCF in 2025-26 (compared to £1.3m in 2024-25). This is due to a decrease in the NIHR grant income during the previous calendar year, which is the main basis on which RCF awards are calculated.
10.7. The panel that oversees RCF at OUH made a number of individual awards in support of NIHR-funded research in OUH and the University of Oxford to cover absences as a result of parental or long-term sick leave. This provided essential support to ensure NIHR-funded research could continue. RCF also made a significant contribution towards research overhead costs and the costs of managing NIHR grants.