In 2025 the Life Sciences Sector Plan outlined six key priorities for the government, one of which was to reduce the time it takes to set up a trial in the UK to under 150 days.
The Health Research Authority has been working with our partners as part of the UK Clinical Research Delivery (UKCRD) programme to introduce changes to help speed up the study set-up process and ensure there is a consistent approach across the UK.
Speeding up the set-up process means that research participants can be recruited quicker, studies completed faster and the potential benefits to patients delivered sooner.
In February 2025 we carried out a survey asking people working across health and social care research about their experience of study set-up at sites.
We shared the results of the survey in August 2025 and used the results to create a benchmark to measure experience of site set-up.
We promised that we would repeat the survey again in 2026 to see what progress we have made.
Share your thoughts
We want to see if the changes we have introduced over the past year have improved the experience of study set-up in the UK.
To do this we are asking people with a role in setting up health and social care research studies in the UK that involve patients, service users, or their relatives or carers, at research sites, to complete our short survey.
The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.
The survey is not intended to ask what is or isn’t working for study set-up at site, but there is a free text box at the end where you can share any specific feedback you may have.
The survey closes at 5pm on Monday 13 April 2026.
When will we share the results of the survey?
Once the survey closes we will take some time to analyse the results and compare them to the findings from the 2025 survey.
We will publish the results on our website and share them with our UKCRD partners.
We know changes will take time and we will issue this survey each year to track progress.
If you have any questions about the survey please email communications@hra.nhs.uk
What are 'research sites'?
Research sites are the organisations with day-to-day responsibility for the locations where a research project is carried out. These organisations may have various roles in any given study and can exist in several settings, for example in hospital, community-based, primary care or residential settings.