Secure Up to GBP 1.97 Million for UK Business Expectations Data Infrastructure: ESRC Decision Maker Panel Grant 2026 to 2029

Historical reference: Decision Maker Panel 2026 to 2029

The official UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding page marks this Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) opportunity Closed. It was an invite-only funding opportunity for a three-year phase of the Decision Maker Panel (DMP), a longitudinal survey that gathers information from business decision makers about the expectations and uncertainties facing their firms. The closing deadline was 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. No later DMP funding round is announced on the official opportunity page, so this entry should be read as an archive of the 2026 to 2029 call, not as an open application route.

The page remains useful for people trying to understand what the ESRC sought from the invited team, what a future continuation might need to cover, and which parts of the UKRI Funding Service process applied to this round. It should not be used to infer that applications are still being accepted.

At a glance

The two funding figures need to be distinguished. UKRI displays £2,460,000 as the total fund for the opportunity, while the call says that ESRC would contribute no more than £1.97 million toward an award and that the total funding applied for could not exceed that maximum. The latter is the relevant cap for the invited application. The opportunity was not a general-purpose research grant: it was designed to maintain a specific survey capability and its value to the research and policy community.

What the call was designed to support

The central aim was continuity of the DMP survey time series. The official description says that the panel collects economic data from key decision makers in businesses of different sizes and industries, with particular attention to the expectations and uncertainties affecting those businesses. Maintaining the series matters because repeated questions and a stable survey operation can show how business conditions and plans change over time. A single new survey wave could provide a snapshot; a continuing panel can provide evidence about movement, persistence, and changing confidence.

The scope was broader than fieldwork alone. The invited proposal needed to explain how the team would maintain the survey capability and continue to engage with ESRC goals. The call identified several eligible strands of work:

• Data gathering from key decision makers in business.
• Activities that make the resulting data available to other researchers.
• Data analysis needed for development of the survey.
• Engagement with external users to improve the usability and reliability of the data.

The call also set a boundary. It would not fund broader analysis of the data beyond what was needed for survey development. That distinction is important for interpreting the opportunity: the award was aimed at operating and developing a research resource, not at financing every substantive economic question that could later be studied with the resource.

Who could apply

There was no open competition for an unsolicited application. Only organisations and teams that had received an invitation from UKRI could apply. The official page also required the organisation to meet standard UKRI eligibility rules. That means an interested reader cannot turn this archived listing into an application by simply opening an account or submitting a proposal after the deadline.

The call allowed some collaborators to take part where applicable. International collaborators and UK partners that were not based at approved organisations could be included as project partners. UK-based business, third-sector, or government-body project co-leads could also be included on research grant proposals, subject to the separate UKRI guidance on eligible organisations and costs. These provisions did not remove the invitation requirement or make an otherwise ineligible lead organisation eligible.

The lead research organisation was responsible for submission. The project lead was responsible for completing the application in the Funding Service, while team members and project partners were expected to contribute. The page also noted that only the lead research organisation could submit the completed application to UKRI.

What a credible proposal needed to explain

The proposal needed to show how the DMP would remain a useful, high-quality source of economic data during the 36-month award. A convincing plan would therefore need to connect survey design, recruitment, retention, data processing, quality assurance, governance, and access rather than treating them as separate promises.

For the sample, the Funding Service asked applicants to explain how they would obtain a statistically representative achieved sample, how the sample design served research and policy users, and how the work could be delivered within the stated timescales. For participation, applicants needed a recruitment and retention strategy that addressed viability, value for money, incentives, and delivery. The same section called for attention to legal and ethical issues, including consent, confidentiality, anonymisation, security, and barriers to sharing data.

The data-sharing commitment was a core part of the call. The team needed to describe how data would be made available to other researchers in line with ESRC data infrastructure strategies and ESRC research data policy. In practice, that calls for more than a promise to publish a file. A usable resource needs clear documentation, reliable provenance, understandable variables, appropriate access arrangements, and safeguards for confidential business information. The application also had to address formal information standards and ethical considerations around collecting, storing, releasing, and reusing data.

The call expected the proposal to cover management and delivery in detail. The approach section asked for a credible management plan, governance, a feasible work plan with milestones and deliverables, risk identification with key performance indicators, support and maintenance, access and usage, staff development, the working environment, and accessibility and inclusiveness. Those requirements fit the nature of DMP: preserving the series depends on dependable operational systems as much as on the survey questions themselves.

How applications were submitted

The official process used the new UKRI Funding Service rather than the Je-S system. The project lead first needed to confirm their role and sign in or create a Funding Service account. Creating an account involved selecting the organisation, verifying an email address, and setting a password. If the organisation was not listed, UKRI instructed applicants to contact support@funding-service.ukri.org; the page advised allowing at least 10 working days for an organisation to be added.

Applicants then answered the Funding Service questions directly in the text boxes. They could save their work and return to it, or prepare responses offline and paste them into the service. Where an upload was required, the upload instructions in the Funding Service applied. The project lead was expected to check the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office. The research office would check the application and return it for edits if needed, then submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.

This sequence matters because the research office and finance teams had their own checks on hosting arrangements and financial eligibility. The applicant retained responsibility for meeting all opportunity requirements, even when institutional colleagues handled the final submission. UKRI also warned that an application could not be changed after submission and would not be returned for amendment.

Application sections and assessment

The Funding Service form asked for a plain-English summary, core team roles, a primary discipline classification, and substantive responses about the proposed infrastructure. The listed limits included 550 words for the summary, 5 words for the primary discipline, 500 words for vision, 1,500 words for approach, 500 words for cohort sample design, 500 words for participation recruitment and retention, and 250 words for place. The applicant and team capability section allowed up to 1,650 words, including the Résumé for Research and Innovation modules and optional additions.

Applicants also had to provide information about project partners, including the organisation, contact, contribution type, and value. Where partners were included, a single PDF containing their letters or emails of support was required. If there were no project partners, the Funding Service allowed the applicant to indicate that instead. The application also covered resources and cost justification, research involving human participation, data management and sharing, ethics and responsible research and innovation, and equality, diversity and inclusion.

UKRI said the proposal would be assessed against vision, approach, applicant and team capability, cohort sample design, participation recruitment and retention, data management and sharing, ethics and responsible research and innovation, equality, diversity and inclusion, and resources and cost justification. Expert peers would assess the application, then meet as a panel to score it and make a funding recommendation to ESRC. UKRI said it aimed to complete assessment within approximately three months of receiving an application, with a note of the panel discussion provided by email.

Dates and archive status

The official page gave a publication date of 13 February 2026, an opening date of 24 February 2026 at 9:00am UK time, and a closing date of 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. The proposed project was expected to start on 1 May 2026 and run for 36 months. Because the closing date has passed and UKRI currently labels the opportunity Closed, the deadline in this page’s metadata deliberately retains the real date as 2026-03-10 while historicalReference = true identifies the page as an archive entry.

There is no basis on the verified opportunity page for adding a later deadline, changing the field to rolling, or claiming that a new DMP phase has opened. Readers seeking a future round should check the ESRC and UKRI opportunity listings for a new announcement. The archived application instructions here describe the completed round only.

Official source

Read the complete archived listing on the official UKRI Decision Maker Panel 2026 to 2029 funding opportunity page. For questions tied to that specific call, the page listed dmp@esrc.ukri.org. For Funding Service account or submission-system issues, it listed support@funding-service.ukri.org and the UKRI helpdesk phone number 01793 547490.