Performance Report
This section provides an overview of the Health Research Authority and our work. This includes our performance highlights and analysis providing details of our key activities over the past year delivering our strategy and statutory functions.
Chief Executive's introduction and performance overview
This year we have much to celebrate, as we continue to work with and across the wider health and social care research community – recognising good practice where we find it, encouraging and driving improvement when and where necessary.
Our primary focus during 2023 was to build on the work we already do, through the valuable public involvement we undertake, insight we collect, and ongoing engagement with the research community. Our current three-year strategy – which launched in June 2022 - provided a bold new vision for us to work more closely with those involved in, and affected by, health and social care research. We look to be inclusive, consultative, and to involve people in our work in meaningful ways.
At the end of last year, we took some time to reflect on our progress against this strategy - to mark the halfway point - and to evaluate our overarching objective to make it simple and fast to deliver research that is fair and trustworthy. We know we still have more to do to fully deliver on and continue to develop against our strategy commitments, but we have much to be proud of.
We ensure that what we do is meaningful to people through public and professional involvement, and by co-develop supporting and explanatory materials. And as we look to improve awareness, and the quality and accessibility, of information on and about research in the UK, increasing involvement is one way in which we can encourage a greater diversity of research participants. All of this is with the overarching aim of enhancing public trust in health and social care research, for the benefit of all.
My huge thanks go to our teams and communities both internal and external to the HRA, who have driven so much of this work over the last year, which is having a real impact and consistently delivering on our commitments.
Staying true to the overarching principle and best practice of “no decision about me, without me” that those of us working in health and social care are guided by, we look to continually improve how we consult and involve people in our work. Building on some of the foundations laid in previous year, we hit three notable ’twos‘ in 2023-24.
Firstly, since announcing the establishment of our Community Committee in 2023, we have held two full successful meetings of the new group, helping to ensure decisions taken at the highest level at the HRA are informed by public involvement.
Secondly, we celebrated our second annual Make it Public Week in March this year, with almost 200 tickets requested for our free workshop held during the week, and a range of communications and engagement activities to support this event. This year’s focus for Make it Public was on clinical trial registration, with our bold aim for 100% of HRA-approved clinical trials to be available on public registries. We know from our recently commissioned public perception survey, run by YouGov in 2023, that adding a research study to a public register before it starts increases the public’s trust and confidence in research findings.
And this year we published, for the first time, a full list of all HRA approved clinical trials with details of which were, and which were not, listed on a public registry. We will continue to work with our Make it Public Campaign group and external partners to encourage research sponsors to register all their trials as we follow up on feedback and insight from our Make it Public workshop during 2024.
Thirdly, in keeping with this theme of notable seconds, earlier this year we celebrated the second anniversary of our Shared Commitment to Public Involvement in health and social care research.
As part of the wider health and care system we look to work in partnership with other national bodies in the health and social care research space. We had 12 partners sign up to the commitment on launch two years ago in 2022, and in 2024 we came together - now as 22 organisations - to look at the difference we are making, and what more we can do.
Since we launched the Shared Commitment, we have collectively committed to 70 new actions to improve public involvement in health and social care research, and in 2024 have launched new Learning and Sharing meetings, to establish regular forums to develop ideas and address challenges together.
We have also taken time to act on recommendations from independent reviews and government priorities for the research sector over the last 12 months. 2023 saw the publication of Lord O’Shaughnessy’s independent review of the UK’s commercial clinical trials landscape, and the government’s response. Additionally, the government published its response to The Tickell review early in 2024, on plans to reduce bureaucracy in the research system. We exist to help make it easier to do research that people can trust, and so have a key role in implementing recommendations included in both the O’Shaughnessy and Tickell reviews and responses.
To drive this improvement activity forward, we have been working with our key stakeholders and partners to ensure review and response timelines are as expeditious as possible. We had already made some of the improvements highlighted in the reviews as part of the UK-wide collaboration to improve clinical research and deliver a shared vision for clinical research delivery, to improve the lives of people across the UK, and through streamlining the UK approval system. We were very pleased to see this recognised by the government.
This has also included working with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on our combined review process – saving researchers time on administrative procedures - and working with NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), to address delays in the set-up of research.
I would like to acknowledge the ongoing hard work, commitment, and professionalism of my colleagues at the HRA. With our established staff networks and external public and professional groups, we continue to strive for inclusivity and to promote diversity in everything we do, and to foster an environment where we can continue to learn and improve, both internally and externally, and through enabling research that the public can trust.
We continue to prepare for improvements to our own systems and ways of working, not least with 2024 looking like a pivotal year for health and medical technology and new AI support tools. These developments will inevitably affect how we continue to deliver our core services, and we will work collaboratively with our key partners and stakeholders, as well as external developers and innovators across the health and social care system, to make best use of any new tools and ways of working.
It has been a very busy year for digital projects. We’re committed to making things easier for researchers and everyone who uses our systems by improving our Integrated Research Application System (IRAS), which people use to apply to do, and then manage, health and social care research in the UK.
We’ve been working hard to put strong foundations in place to deliver what is a large-scale, complex programme to design and build the IRAS of the future. This has included increasing capability within the HRA, appointing a delivery partner to support us and preparing for digital change.
At the same time, of course, we need to support our existing services until new ones are ready. During 2023-24, we completed a major schedule of work to make sure all current systems are more robust, reliable and continue to provide a good service to our research community in the intervening period. And as you will see below, we continue to deliver on our day to day, core functions, with 3,864 studies approved to start in 2023-24, maintaining an 83% satisfaction rate.
So, whilst we are not complacent and will be undertaking a significant system transformation programme in 2024, we remain committed to providing the best service to our research community. I would like to end by thanking all those who have engaged and collaborated with us at the HRA over the last year to help us continue to improve and deliver our services.
Chief Executive, Health Research AuthorityDr Matt Westmore
Key issues and risks
As with all organisations, there are risks that we face in the implementation of our strategy and statutory functions. We actively and effectively manage these to minimise any impact on users of our services, as well as other stakeholders and our people. Notable risks this year include:
Delivery of transformed and improved research systems
This risk relates to the development and implementation of a new and improved research system, so that it meets the needs of the health research community, making the UK an attractive place to conduct research. The research system has multiple connections and dependencies across several organisations and is a complex programme to deliver.
To address this we have enacted the recommendations from an independent Gate Review 0, conducted in 2022-23 and now have a delivery partner in place.
Essential programme roles have been recruited, and a robust governance structure has been put in place. The road map for the programme has been developed with a model for managing this in place.
A further Gate Review 0 is scheduled for summer 2024.
Successful delivery of the objectives of the organisation due to financial pressures
We recognise the challenges in delivering our business plan objectives due to increased cost pressures such as inflation, agenda for change pay award increases, and uncertainty surrounding the required finances for the successful delivery of the research systems programme. This potential for a shortfall in funding would impact on successfully fulfilling the HRA’s strategic objectives.
To manage this we have put in place rigorous business and financial planning for 2023-24 and 2024-25, identifying the risks associated with budget shortfalls. A new role, the Chief Business Transformation Officer, has been appointed to create greater capacity to focus on cash releasing efficiencies from process improvements.
Business planning for 2024-25 has identified the key priorities for the organisation to ensure these can be successfully achieved within ongoing financial pressures.
Recruitment and retention of an effective workforce to meet the objectives of the organisation
Due to the current employment market and competition in the public sector and specialist areas, such as technological roles, we have recognised it is difficult to recruit to vacant positions, increasing pressure in retaining staff. This scarcity of suitable candidates for positions has resulted in under-resourcing, impacting on our ability to deliver our business plan.
We have updated our People Strategy, intending to improve our attractiveness to candidates, with strong employee benefits and total reward packages in place.
Strategic workforce planning has been undertaken with resource planning a key component of business planning for 2024-25.
Performance analysis
Performance management
We plan our work in order to achieve our strategy and statutory functions. We do this by preparing an annual business plan, which sets out how we will deliver our strategy and our statutory functions. This plan is prepared with the involvement of a wide stakeholder group, and is embedded throughout the organisation in our performance, people and risk management processes.
These processes help to make sure we successfully achieve our strategic goals and meet our statutory functions. Importantly, it also helps our people understand their role in delivering our plans.
We monitor and evaluate our performance against our strategy, business plan and financial plan every three months, and we collate a strategic performance report for our Executive Committee and Board to review. This includes key performance metrics including user satisfaction data, an analysis of our change portfolio, a strategy performance report, risk management reporting and finance report. These reports combined provide assurance on how we are delivering on our strategy and highlights areas for focus and improvement.
Individual staff objectives that complement and support these organisational objectives are developed during the annual appraisal process and monitored throughout the year during regular one-to-ones between staff and their managers.
The way that we manage our performance and its relationship with risk and uncertainty is explained in more detail in our corporate governance report on page 32.
As a learning organisation, we regularly review and refine our performance management and reporting systems, to ensure we continue to fulfil our strategy ambition and statutory functions.
We also set operational key performance indicators, which are collated and monitored by delivery teams, focussing on continuous improvement and statutory compliance. Operational metrics are reported every three months to our Executive Committee.
Performance reporting
Our performance reporting focuses on four areas:
- customer satisfaction
- our services performance
- our people
- financial
Customer satisfaction
We’re pleased that satisfaction with our overall performance has remained consistently high throughout the year, always exceeding our 75% target.
Our staff continue to score the highest in our satisfaction surveys, with IRAS scoring the lowest. Our transformation programme for IRAS intends to improve user experience and streamline the process.
Our services performance
We measure our performance by the time it takes to conduct ethics review of clinical trials of investigational medicinal products (CTIMPs). Ethics review is provided by Research Ethics Committees (RECs) that assess research applications to determine whether they meet ethical standards. Our statutory performance target requires all ethical reviews of CTIMPs to be performed within 60 days. This graph sets out the percentage of reviews that were performed within this target.
This year 4% of these reviews resulted in an unfavourable opinion – consistent with 2022-23.
We also measure our performance by the time it takes to deliver our HRA approval service. This service brings together the assessment of governance and legal compliance, undertaken by dedicated HRA staff, with ethics review, performed by a Research Ethics Committee. This timeline is not completely within our control as parts of the process rely on other review bodies and coordinating organisations to deliver a combined outcome to researchers. We work collaboratively with these organisations to make sure timelines are predictable and streamlined. In 2023, the research regulator Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) experienced delays in their approval timelines. This affected the time it took to give HRA Approval in 2022-23 and 2023-24. This backlog at MHRA has now been resolved and both their and our timelines are back to expected levels.
Our people
Our staff and Community members have continued to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to UK health and social care. Our people make sure our statutory services are on time and consistently of high quality. They are also key to implementing our strategic goals. We measure capacity to help us understand where our services may be under pressure so that we can put in place mitigations to maintain good services. We measure both staff and committee membership capacity to:
- compare our actual staff capacity compared to planned levels
- monitor our committee membership vacancy rate
Staff capacity is below our target capacity level of 91%. Although our staff turnover rate is within sector ranges, we have found it difficult to recruit to specialist roles such as digital and programme management. We have put in place several actions to address this including revising job descriptions to reflect professional standards, offering recruitment and retention premia where appropriate as well as offering internal development opportunities to grow our capabilities and capacity.
Committee membership vacancy rate has been higher than our 8% target due to workforce pressures in the NHS and slower recruitment of new members compared to those leaving the service. This high vacancy rate makes it difficult to support the ethics service, creating a higher workload for our volunteer members. This year, we launched a reinvigorated recruitment campaign as well as an online application form and a streamlined interview process. As a result, the vacancy rate has fallen and is now 6%, well within our target rate for the last three months of this year.
Financial review
Our accounts consist of our primary statements providing summary information about our income and expenditure in the year, our assets and liabilities at the end of the year, and how we have managed our cashflows. They also include detailed notes to these statements that provide more information about our accounts.
Our accounts have been prepared based on the standards set out in the Government Functional Reporting Manual (FReM) to give a true and fair view. We remained within our agreed revenue and capital funding allocations for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for the year-ended 31 March 2024.
Government funding
Our total confirmed funding from DHSC for the year was £23.1m (2022-23 £23.6m), of which:
- £21.0m (2022-23: £22.8m) was revenue funding
- £2.1m (2022-23: £0.8m) was capital funding
The increase in confirmed funding in 2021-22 enabled investment in replacing and transforming our research systems and provided increased capacity to deliver our part in DHSC’s Recovery, Resilience and Growth programme. This increase was offset by 5% efficiency savings achieved by moving our ethics service online and reducing travel and meeting room costs.
In 2022-23 we decided to pause our research systems transformation to review the approach. This pause reduced the funding we needed in 2022-23 and 2023-24 to undertake this programme, particularly capital funding. We agreed, as part of the DHSC Efficiency and Reform Review, to defer programme expenditure while we made sure the programme was set up for success, reducing in year programme costs. As a result, funding received from DHSC was £19.6m (2022-23: £19.2m).
The programme was relaunched in Autumn 2023, and associated funding and expenditure is expected to increase for the life of the programme.
Other revenue
We also received income from cost-sharing arrangements with other publicly funded organisations, which included:
- £0.4m (2022-23: £0.4m) from the devolved administrations for providing support and digital systems to deliver the UK research ethics service
- £0.0m (2022-23: £0.1m) towards the costs of our Manchester office from High Speed Two who shared our office space in the city until April 2023
How do we spend our funding?
We take great care to plan our activities well to deliver our strategy and statutory services. Our business planning process appraises how best to invest our limited resources to provide our statutory functions as well as to implement our strategic plan. This process makes sure we spend our funds wisely, maximising our impact.
Our total expenditure for the year was £18.5m (2022-23: £22.2m), resulting in an underspend on our committed revenue funding of £2.5m. This underspend was mostly due to the pause on our research systems transformation resulting in lower staff costs, development costs and lower amortisation costs. We have reprofiled this expenditure to later years to reflect this change.
Most of our expenditure (74%) is staff costs at £13.7m (2022-23: £15.1m, 68%). Our staff are paid in line with agenda for change pay scales and associated terms and conditions. Our staff structure is agreed as part of the annual business planning process. Any changes to this agreed structure are governed by our scheme of financial delegation and business case process.
Future funding
The Department of Health and Social Care have confirmed our revenue funding for 2024-25 is £21.8m and our capital funding is £5.5m. This increase will fund our Research Systems Programme and additional responsibilities placed on the HRA by Commercial clinical trials in UK: the Lord O’Shaughnessy review.
Making payments
We aim to comply with Better Payments Practice Code by paying suppliers within 30 days of receipt of an invoice. The percentage of non-NHS invoices paid within this target was 97.4% (2022-23: 94.0%). This improvement is the result of our public involvement and finance teams working together to simplify and streamline the way we make payments to public contributors.
| 2023-24 Number | 2022-23 Number | |
| Total non-NHS trade invoices paid in the year | 977 | 1,170 |
| Total non-NHS trade invoices paid within target | 952 | 1,100 |
| Percentage of non-NHS trade invoices paid within target | 97% | 94% |
| 2023-24 Number | 2022-23 Number | |
| Total NHS trade invoices paid in the year | 104 | 116 |
| Total NHS trade invoices paid within target | 101 | 114 |
| Percentage of NHS trade invoices paid within target | 97% | 98% |
| 2023-24 Value £000 | 2022-23 Value £000 | |
| Total non-NHS trade invoices paid in the year | 4,416 | 4,489 |
| Total non-NHS trade invoices paid within target | 4,374 | 4,396 |
| Percentage of non-NHS trade invoices paid within target | 99% | 98% |
| 2023-24 Value £000 | 2022-23 Value £000 | |
| Total NHS trade invoices paid in the year | 1,445 | 1,650 |
| Total NHS trade invoices paid within target | 1,393 | 1,602 |
| Percentage of NHS trade invoices paid within target | 96% | 97% |
Strategy performance analysis
Include: health and social care research is done with and for everyone
Include everyone in research
We want to make sure that clinical research can improve the health of the whole population.
Including a diverse group of people in research give us a better understanding of the most effective treatment, devices and care for different groups of people.
At the HRA we are working with the MHRA to help researchers improve the diversity of participants in their research. This year we co-developed a set of questions and supporting guidance for researchers to consider when they design clinical trials and clinical investigations. This will help to ensure clinical research is designed to include people who could benefit from the findings, and that people underserved by research are not overlooked.
Public involvement in health and social care research is about all the ways the research community works together with people. This includes patients, carers, advocates, service users, and members of the community.
Over the last year we have raised awareness of the best practice principles for public involvement and what we expect to see in research applications. We have also embedded best practice principles in guidance we are developing to support changes to the clinical trials regulations.
In March 2024 we celebrated the second anniversary of the Shared Commitment to public involvement which now includes 23 organisations who are committed to improving the extent and quality of public involvement across the research sector.
Each organisation signs up to a clear statement that ‘public involvement is important, expected and possible in all types of health and care research’. Since the shared commitment launched in 2022 it has grown by 77%, from 13 to 23 organisations (see graph above)
Promoting research transparency is a key part of our work to facilitate safe and ethical research. When research is carried out openly and transparently, everyone benefits.
Our Make it Public strategy sets out our vison for research transparency. This year, for the first time, we published a full list of clinical trials that received a favourable opinion from a Research Ethics Committee (REC) in 2022, including their sponsor and registration status. This includes details of research that has not been registered, and any reasons why.
Ask you what you want research to look like and act on this
To help us understand what matters to the public about research, we commissioned a survey of over 5,000 people from across the UK.
This survey - Public Perceptions of Research revealed that the public is broadly positive about health and social care research that happens in the UK, with two thirds (67%) being confident it improves people’s health and well-being.
Additionally, three-quarters (75%) think that, if they took part in research, they would be treated with dignity and respect, and just over two-thirds (68%) of UK adults saying they would be willing to participate, if asked.
In 2022 we began working alongside members of the public, the University of Lincoln, and researchers to explore ways to improve how clinical research happens for the people taking part. This work culminated in the publication of the hallmarks of People-Centred Clinical Research, which was well received at the NHS Research and Development Forum conference in 2023, and at our REC development days.
These hallmarks will help researchers and organisations make sure their research is conducted in good people-centred ways, and that research participants also understand what good research practice looks like
This year we worked with external partners including Sciencewise, Our Future Health, and Genomics England to support a public dialogue about how people can trust the way that they will be treated if they lose capacity while taking part in a longitudinal research project. This work is expected to continue in 2024-25.
Involve you in the HRA
We set up and held two meetings of our Community Committee to improve how the HRA involves people in its work.
The Committee is part of our governance structure (page 32) and advises the Board on how it operates and on its bigger strategic ambitions.
This year, our public involvement work included 120 public involvement activities with 139 individuals, and we spent £25,880 (2022-23: £39,096) directly to individuals for their involvement.
We are also developing plans to make sure we recruit and retain a diverse group of people in our regulatory decision-making committees, including our Research Ethics Committees (RECs) and the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) and expect to implement these plans in 2024-25.
We did not develop and launch a new HRA website, or refresh our brand and tone in 2023-24, as we had planned. We took a decision to pause this activity while we implemented changes to our Research Systems Programme, and managed extended unplanned absences in the team responsible for delivering this work.
Accelerate: research findings improve care faster because the UK is the easiest place in the world to do research that people can trust.
Save money and time so that you can focus on doing good research
The UK’s performance in clinical trials has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels and the set-up time for commercial studies has reduced by over 100 days. This means trials will reach patients more quickly, and increase the confidence of sponsors to conduct their studies in the UK.
Standardising and co-ordinating parts of the research set-up process is important to make it quicker and easier to set-up studies. To enable this, we updated 12 model agreements that are used by research sponsor and host organisations to setup research.
We also supported the completion of the UK-wide National Contract Value Review (NCVR), accelerating the elements of the contracting process across the NHS. This work - coordinated by NHS England - has reduced the time it takes to agree costing and contracting for a clinical trial or study from ten months to six months on average - this is a huge success.
Also, by introducing standard pricing, the NCVR creates a fairer system for research to be carried out across the UK. It makes sure all areas recover their full costs, accounts for the differing needs of local populations, and saves time and money, giving sponsors predictable costs to work with.
We have continued to put in place improvements to make it simpler to set up research. This has included exploring the streamlining of our ethics review, publishing guidance to enable a more proportionate delivery of clinical trials of medicines, and launching patient information quality standards.
We have also supported the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre Network (ECMC) in their development of interventions to unblock pharmacy and radiation assurances in early phase trials.
Create a new online system to help you make research happen
This year we restarted our Research Systems Programme to transform our digital services which support the health and social care research system. Our vision for the future of these services is to connect the processes for health and social care research in the UK. We will help make the UK a great place to do research that people can trust and we will help people to work together to plan, approve, set up, manage, and complete research.
The expected benefits of the programme are:
- reducing time and effort to prepare research for review
- improving collaboration and helping users get it right first time
- increased opportunities for users to self-service
- reducing demand for one-to-one support with simple issues
- improving the value and quality of data
- reducing the number of legacy systems to run and maintain
We have worked hard to improve how we do our user research to gain a better understanding of user needs and their experience. This work has been integral to defining requirements for our improved systems, including the development of a series of ideal pathways for research studies. This helps to ensure that the right information is provided at the right time, to the right people, to streamline study set-up, proportionate to study activity.
We also ran workshops to design and test site set-up functionality. This is a deliberate shift in how we work, making sure our digital services best reflect current user need and experience.
This year we collaborated with our partners to agree new processes to support automatic data sharing, so that researchers do not have to submit the same information multiple times.
Support new ways to do research
The regulatory pathway for artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies in health and social care can be slow, complex, and difficult to navigate.
For researchers this can mean wasted time and effort and delays to research projects. On 12 June 2023 the AI and Digital Regulations Service (AIDRS) was launched to help the NHS, and the wider care system, adopt and make best use of new digital and AI technologies.
The service provides guidance to the NHS and social care adopters and digital health innovators. It is a multi-agency collaboration between the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Care Quality Commission (CQC), MHRA, and the HRA, and was funded by the NHS AI Lab.
Collating information from all four organisations into one place provides comprehensive guidance for each stage of the adoption pathway. The service can also respond to individual enquiries, ensuring a simple process to connect with relevant services or system partners.
We also supported NHSE with the setup of secure data environments. These environments are data storage and access platforms which uphold the highest standards of privacy and security of NHS health and social care data when used for research and analysis. We provided ethics and information governance expertise to inform how the network of sub-national secure data environments would be implemented.
We have also created and maintained links with stakeholders to understand opportunities for innovation and change and held UK-wide joint industry and NHS stakeholder meetings to discuss opportunities for change linked to study set-up.
Design our digital technology to do our work well
Design our digital systems in a human-centred way
This year we recommenced our Research Systems Programme, following a pause in 2022 and 2023 where we reviewed our approach, and went to market to secure a digital partner to work with us on the programme. Since the restart we have been focused on setting the programme up for success, to enable change and achieve our vision for helping to make the UK a great place to do research that people can trust.
These developments have included onboarding our new digital partner, setting up governance arrangements for the programme, recruiting specialist technical expertise and improving our ways of working such as how we implement agile and human-centred design.
We also completed the foundation phase of the programme, which is where we defined the vision, benefits, roles and responsibilities, and principles for determining how we develop the replacement system.
In March 2024 we began the design and build phase of the programme, with discovery work starting on two of our digital services.
This year we also focused on improving the resilience of our existing research systems. We put in place an action plan to strengthen these systems and have completed upgrades to all Windows servers.
We had also planned to improve the HRA website this year, but instead have decided to delay this project whilst we firm up the approach to our Research Systems Programme.
Automate and join-up processes where this will improve our work
While we paused our Research Systems Programme, we focused on improving researchers’ experience when applying to set up a research study, or when making changes to a research study, by creating a single point of contact for service users. This involved changing our processes to better align to best practice, and adjusting our structures to enable this.
As part of our work to strengthen our existing research systems we implemented hardware upgrades, enabling increased automation of essential housekeeping tasks including cyber security processes, creating greater resilience. We also embedded an enhanced major IT incident process, which has improved our way of handling critical incidents.
A cross-disciplinary team created a new automated process for applying to be a Research Ethics Committee member, using digital forms to simplify and speed up the process. We also used scheduling software to better organise new member interviews, improving both their experience and how we could better manage resource.
These changes reduced our member vacancy rate from 18% to 6%.
We have also used digital applications to automate how we manage break in service and end of term processes, to reduce manual processes.
Always look for ways to do things better
Always learn, improve, and innovate
Working in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) we introduced a new learning management system this year for our staff and HRA Community. This new system will provide an improved learning experience as well as lower running costs. We also started a project to replace our intranet, to improve how we communicate and share knowledge internally. This project is now expected to be completed in 2024-25, having been delayed due to staff shortages.
We also improved the monitoring of our assurance activities, with clear reporting and management of internal audit recommendations. These changes saw a significant reduction in overdue audit recommendations from seven to one, demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach.
Much of our activity under this strategic aim has been preparing us for our Research Systems Programme, including training staff in Agile project management, gaining government project delivery accreditation for six staff members, and publishing portfolio, programme, and project management frameworks.
We have also made organisational changes and recruited to essential roles, recommended by the Research Systems Programme Gate 0 review, including the appointment of a Chief Business Transformation Officer, and a Head of User Centred Design.
Be a great place to work
Our People Strategy sets out what we will do to attract, retain, and grow our employees to help achieve our strategy. This year is the second year of the strategy. How we support our people is also guided by our annual staff survey, which informs how we can improve our ways of working guided by an associated action plan.
In 2023 we changed how we shared the staff survey results, to make sure the results were inclusive and appealing to all staff. We acted on feedback from staff to change the reporting pack and shared the report before the meeting where it was being presented to all staff, to help improve understanding and engagement during the meeting. We also developed principles to consider when exercising discretion and embedded these in our Essential Managers programme.
We developed a wellbeing site for staff, to bring all the relevant resources into one place and updated and agreed the next Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy for staff. This builds on the achievements of the previous strategy, including improved promotion of our EDI work on our website. We also created and launched an online EDI resource for staff.
Unfortunately, due to reduced staff capacity, we delayed the development of the policy and guidance that will support staff when working with vulnerable patients, participants, and HRA Community. We expect to publish this guidance later in 2024-25.
We had also planned to develop our management and leadership framework this year but have deferred this to a later date to focus on our preparations for the Research Systems Programme.
And finally, we improved our approach to business planning by including finance and HR experts in planning meetings, undertaking a six-month review of progress, undertaking business case training, and updating the scheme of delegation and spend control.
Commit to environmental sustainability and achieving net zero
In collaboration with our Green Team, a staff-led group set up to help make the HRA a more sustainable organisation, we:
- published our environmental sustainability strategy which contains nine goals
- undertook a climate principles audit and created assessment guidance
- estimated the cost of our hybrid working approach and continue to monitor it
- worked with our suppliers to reduce carbon usage and waste in our supply chain
- monitored our use of single-use plastics and reported to Government on our Greening Government Commitments
- drafted an environmental sustainability procurement statement in preparation for consultation
- recycled all equipment as part of our Manchester office move to other companies
- made sure all our technology (hardware) was reused or recycled and none went to landfill
Sustainability report
The HRA is committed to environmental sustainability and achieving net zero. To help make this happen, the Green Team - a staff-led group committed to improving sustainability - developed and launched our first Environmental Sustainability Strategy in 2022. This strategy aims to embed environmental sustainability as part of our culture and ways of working, and was updated for 2023 (it will be revised again for 2024).
We have made good progress this year with the introduction of emissions monitoring and increased awareness of our Environmental Sustainability Strategy. We are pleased with how much we have achieved, and want to do more to make sure we play our part ensuring the environment is protected for future generations.
We work in partnership with our colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and our Green Team, to improve environmental performance across the organisation. Our approach continues to focus on staff-led initiatives alongside strategic commitments to deliver significant, lasting change. Our vision, to make this change happen, is to embed environmentally sustainable practices into our daily business, making environmental sustainability the norm.
Our work is aligned with the five environmental principles, as set out in section 17(5) of the Environment Act, encouraging not only our teams but also our partners and suppliers to consider the environment in all activities.
Our estates strategy also works to support our sustainability strategy. This includes ensuring that sustainability and environmental performance is prioritised in decision making. We also make sure lease events are managed, meeting government policy and supporting our strategy. In 2023, our five office locations were in spaces shared with other government bodies to improve office utilisation and energy efficiency. Where we share offices, energy reporting is provided by our public landlord and is not included in our Greening Government Commitment reporting.
Several initiatives have been introduced to support our strategy, including:
- looking at how we buy goods and services to make sure sustainability considerations are included in decision-making
- introducing an Environmental Sustainability statement in all new policies and procedures
- assessing all domestic and international flight requests against several factors including cost, time, energy consumption and staff wellbeing before booking travel
The following tables show our key performance indicators that help us measure our ambition to achieve net zero.
The graph shows monthly carbon dioxide CO2 emitted from rail travel undertaken by staff from April 2023 to March 2024. The 2022 baseline and our target for CO2 is shown in red at just below 1,500 KgCO2. Our staff travel in 2022 was significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels and travel this year has exceeded this target. We set this target as a stretch target for 2023, unsure what our future travel requirements would be following the pandemic. We are closely monitoring our staff travel to set a more realistic target level for next year, so we meet both our sustainability goals and make sure our people can work well.
This graph shows monthly carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from April 2023 to March 2024 through rail travel undertaken by committee members and the public who are involved in our work. The 2022 baseline and our target for CO2 is shown in red around 150 KgCO2. Again, this level was set as a stretch target and will be monitored closely to help us set a realistic target for future monitoring.
Staff and HRA Community domestic flights – cumulative CO2
There were 2 domestic flights during 2023-24 (2022-23: 0). Each domestic flight was reviewed against agreed criteria to balance sustainability against other factors such as time and traveller health and wellbeing.
This graph shows reams of paper purchases from 2020 to 2023 for our own printers. It does not include paper used by our suppliers. Each ream of paper contains 500 sheets. There has been an increase in paper purchases since 2020, however purchases remain at a very low level. The increase reflects improvements to our approach to reasonable adjustments, offering those staff who need to work from printed materials the means to do so.
This graph shows single-use plastics ordered from 2020 to 2024, which have increased significantly this year from a very low base. The change relates to the purchase of disposable gloves in response to the pandemic, as a protective measure to keep our people well and the purchase of vinyl badge holders to support our in-person public engagement activities which have grown this year. We will be considering more sustainable alternatives for these badge holders for 2024-25.
Dr Matthew Westmore
Chief Executive
Health Research Authority
15 July 2024