Indirect costs include non-specific costs charged across all projects based on estimates that are not otherwise included as directly allocated costs. They include the costs of the research organisation’s administration such as personnel, finance, library and some departmental services.
They should be shown in the proposal as a single figure (£ total for the project) and do not need to be justified in the case for support.
Redundancy costs are covered by the Cost of Capital Employed (COCE) element and should be included within the Indirect costs.
The full time equivalent (FTE) used as the multiplier for indirect costs associated with a project must include research FTE only (and not technicians).
Research organisations that have passed the quality assurance (QA) process and implemented the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) costing methodology should apply their own Indirect cost rates.
Those research organisations whose implementation of TRAC is not considered robust by the QA process and who are not eligible for dispensation must use the lower of their own or the non-compliant indirect cost rate.
Non-university organisations that are not required to implement TRAC must have a robust costing methodology in place that has been validated by the research councils in order to apply their own indirect costs rate.
Non-university organisations that have not yet had their costing methodology validated by the research councils should apply the dispensation default rates for their indirect costs.
Other research organisations with very low volumes of research income from public sources should also apply the dispensation default rates for the indirect costs.
Last updated: 17 August 2021