Study Set-Up: Latest news

This page sets out the high level principles to support those commercial clinical trials that entered the National Contract Value Review (NCVR) process prior to the introduction of the accelerated NCVR process on 1 July 2026. This will ensure that there is a single NCVR process after 30 October making it clearer and easier for sites and sponsors.

NHS England has published the questions and answers from their recent NCVR webinar.

The UK government is committed to reducing clinical trial set-up times to under 150 days to enable faster, more predictable trial delivery and improve patient access to innovative treatments. A consolidated UK Guidance for Study Set-Up page is now available on the UKCRD website.

From 1 July 2026, a test and learn approach for a more streamlined National Contract Value Review (NCVR) process will ensure an accelerated national negotiation process for all commercial contract research studies.

This guidance provides clarifications on national research review processes and IR(ME)R legislation, to help make study set-up and the delivery of research easier. One area identified by the UKCRD study set-up project, as a barrier to further streamlining, is inconsistent interpretation of the research specific requirements of IR(ME)R by NHS organisations. These inconsistencies result in unnecessary steps in the set-up of research studies involving ionising radiation exposures, adding to delay.