Written by Julia O'Toole, Senior Manager, Greater Manchester CLRN
To give some context to our funding news for 2011-12, Julia O’Toole, Senior Manager, (pictured) sets what the funding means for GM CLRN in the coming year.
First of all we’ll be building new capacity. The two new Local Specialty Group initiatives – Infectious Disease & Vaccine Research; and Accidents, Emergencies, Critical Care – which were successful in receiving additional national funding towards the end of 2010 will now be embedded into CLRN core funding and continue to be supported in 2011-12.
Secondly, as there has been no inflationary up-lift in funding for 2011-12, increases in operational costs and salaries will need to be met through efficiency savings. We will make every effort to work with our member NHS Trusts, Local Speciality Groups and Theme Leads so that all research infrastructure posts that contribute to recruitment into NIHR portfolio studies and the performance of their speciality groups will continue to be supported.
Thirdly, we have been tasked with reducing our overall RM&G funding to member NHS Trusts. Therefore we will need to work closely with our member NHS Trust R&D departments so we can identify any possible efficiency savings. Any savings that are made will be re-invested in our research infrastructure support. This important work is being led by Jane Pearson, Lead RM&G Manager.
And finally, thanks to the work done with our researchers and partner R&D departments for 2011-12 we have been able to predict an overall increase in recruitment of three percent. Of course this figure will vary Trust-by-Trust, depending on which specialties they represent and the studies being undertaken. We look forward to beating all our predictions again.
So whilst 2011-12 has seen a significant uplift in funding we will need to continue to work closely with all our partners to support new initiatives, maintain stability in the workforce, meet the required efficiency savings, beat our predicted recruitment figures and meet national objectives.
I would like to thank everyone across our CLRN and partner organisations for your hard work in the past year in making Greater Manchester such a successful region for clinical research.
If you have any more questions on funding, Julia can be contacted via email or on Tel: 0161 291 5910
