Research & Clinical Trials

Clinical trial setup performance and research activity across the Shelford Group

The 150-day target: The government's Life Sciences Sector Plan commits to reducing clinical trial setup time to under 150 days by March 2026 — from regulatory submission to first participant recruited. The 150-day clock comprises three stages: MHRA/HRA approval (target: 60 days), site opening after approval (target: 60 days), and first participant recruited after site opening (target: 30 days). Two different measures: the national 150-day headline is measured per study, from application to the first participant recruited at any site in the country, whereas the trust figures below are measured per site, from approval or site selection to that trust’s own first participant. A trust can therefore be slower than 90 days on a study that the country as a whole delivers within 150 days, because another site may recruit first. The data below relates to the site-level component: whether studies recruited their first participant within 90 days of regulatory approval or site selection, whichever is later. This is a key NIHR Research Delivery Network performance metric, with funding implications for trusts.

Site Set-Up Performance — UKCRD Monthly Tracking

Primary tracking series for this page. Sourced directly from the UK Clinical Research Delivery (UKCRD) programme's Trust Level Set-Up Report (ukcrd.org), drawing on the NIHR Research Delivery Network's Central Portfolio Management System (CPMS). Tracks commercial interventional studies recruiting their first participant within 90 days of HRA approval or site selection, excluding extension, rare disease and low-recruiting studies. Republished monthly on a rolling 6-month window. The Shelford aggregate below adds up the studies across all 10 trusts and works out what share hit each milestone — not an average of the ten trusts' separate percentages, which would count a 3-study trust the same as a 25-study trust. UKCRD only publishes rounded percentages per trust, not the underlying study counts, so we back-calculated each trust's count from its percentage and total studies before adding them up.

Source: UKCRD Trust Level Set-Up Report, ukcrd.org (NIHR RDN CPMS data). Five consecutive monthly snapshots — report dates 03 Jun, 03 Jul, 04 Aug, 03 Sep and 05 Oct 2026, each a rolling 6-month window. An earlier snapshot (30 Apr 2026, cut 25 Apr 2026, window since 07 Apr 2025) used the pre-format-change methodology and is shown separately below as a baseline, not part of the trend. No May 2026 snapshot exists on the archive — the site jumps from the 25 Apr cut straight to the 01 Jun cut.

How the three percentages relate: the 90-day figure measures the full elapsed time from approval or site selection (whichever is later) to first participant. The 60-day and 30-day figures split that journey into two consecutive stages, each judged against its own threshold: approval or selection → site opening (which includes local set-up steps such as contracting), and site opening → first participant. Because the stages are assessed separately, the three percentages aren’t nested and needn’t move together. A site can open within 60 days but take longer than 30 days to recruit, or open late and then recruit quickly, so the 60-day and 30-day rates can sit above or below the 90-day rate. Only a study that passes both stage thresholds is guaranteed to meet the 90-day target overall.

% Studies Completing Set-Up Within 90 Days — Shelford Aggregate vs Trusts

Bold teal line: Shelford weighted aggregate. Thinner lines: individual trusts — click a name in the legend to isolate it. Hover a point for the study count (n) behind each percentage; several trusts have small monthly samples, so month-to-month swings can reflect a handful of studies rather than a genuine shift in performance.

Trust-level detail by month

Note: the 60-day and 30-day columns cover two consecutive stages (approval or selection → site opening, then site opening → first participant), each measured against its own threshold. Contracting and other local set-up steps fall within the first stage, so they count towards both the 60-day and 90-day columns. See the note above the cards.

Trust	Studies (n)	% within 90 days	Median days (set-up)	% opening within 60 days	% recruiting within 30 days of opening

Baseline reference — 30 April 2026 (different window, not part of trend)

Report date 30 April 2026, data cut 25 April 2026. Window: since 07 April 2025 (13-month cumulative, pre-format-change methodology).

Trust	Studies (n)	% within 90 days	Median days (set-up)	% opening within 60 days	% recruiting within 30 days of opening

An NIHR Open Data Platform series (12 months to Feb 2026) previously tracked trial set-up performance on this page using a broader, differently-defined dataset; it has been retired in favour of the more current, tightly-specified UKCRD monthly series above.

Global and European Firsts

What a "First" is. A Global or European First is recorded when a site is the first in the world, or first in Europe, to recruit a participant (First Patient/Healthy Volunteer First Visit) to a given study on the NIHR Research Delivery Network portfolio. Figures are supplied by study sponsors through the Regional Research Delivery Networks and validated by the NIHR RDN Coordinating Centre. Both figures below cover England only — Devolved Administration Firsts are published separately by NIHR and are not included in the national totals used here, so the two are compared on a like-for-like basis.

Sources: NIHR "Global and European Firsts" annual tables (sites.google.com/nihr.ac.uk/globalandeuropeanfirsts, 2025/26 page, updated 24/08/2026), copied and supplied by the Shelford secretariat; and the UKCRD September 2026 monthly update (ukcrd.org, published 07/10/2026), “Trusts achieving a Global or European First in March – August 2026” table, filtered here to the 2026/27 year to date (1 Apr–31 Aug 2026) and to England-scope entries only (two Scottish entries — Perth Royal Infirmary, NHS Tayside, and Western General Hospital, NHS Lothian — excluded for consistency with the annual England-only totals). Three of the 2026/27 entries are flagged by UKCRD as retrospectively reported and are included. UKCRD republishes this table on a rolling six-month window, so earlier months of 2026/27 will need to be carried forward from previous editions as the window moves on.

FY2025/26 — Shelford Firsts

36 of 102

35.3% of all traceable England Firsts (13 Global, 23 European)

FY2025/26 — Contributing organisations

7 of 42

16.7% of organisations that recorded a First — yet Shelford took 35.3% of the Firsts themselves

2026/27 to date (Apr–Aug) — Shelford Firsts

14 of 43

32.6% of England Firsts so far this year (4 Global, 10 European)

2026/27 to date (Apr–Aug) — Contributing organisations

6 of 21

28.6% of organisations, taking 32.6% of the Firsts

"Contributing organisations" counts each named recruiting Trust/provider once, however many Firsts it achieved, and only counts a Shelford trust if it achieved at least one First in that period — GSTT, Manchester and Sheffield Teaching recorded none in either period, and Birmingham has recorded none so far in 2026/27, so they aren't counted among the "7" or "6" above. Organisations are counted at trust level (or practice level for primary care sites), with differently spelt entries for the same trust treated as one. The comparison to Shelford's much higher share of Firsts is the intended point: a smaller set of contributing organisations, delivering a disproportionate share of national output.

Shelford trust breakdown

Trust	FY2025/26 Global	FY2025/26 European	FY2025/26 Total	2026/27 to date Global	2026/27 to date European	2026/27 to date Total
UCLH	4	8	12	1	2	3
Imperial	2	7	9	1	3	4
Cambridge	4	2	6	0	3	3
King's	1	2	3	1	1	2
Newcastle	1	2	3	1	0	1
Oxford	1	1	2	0	1	1
Birmingham	0	1	1	0	0	0
GSTT	0	0	0	0	0	0
Manchester	0	0	0	0	0	0
Sheffield	0	0	0	0	0	0
Shelford total	13	23	36	4	10	14
England total (all organisations)	32†	70†	102†	13	30	43

† The UKCRD September 2026 update now states that 33 Global and 72 European Firsts were achieved in England in 2025/26 (105 in total), up from the 32 Global and 71 European in the NIHR annual page used here — most likely because of retrospectively reported Firsts. The FY2025/26 figures in this table have not been changed, because the revised totals are not yet available as a row-level list that can be checked trust by trust; they will be updated when a revised annual table is supplied. Separately, the NIHR page's own summary text states 71 European Firsts for 2025/26, but only 70 distinct rows are present in the table as supplied — one row (Woodstock Bower Group Practice, 31/03/2026) is duplicated rather than being a genuinely distinct 71st entry. Percentages above use 70 as the traceable denominator; if the missing row is recovered, the England European and combined totals should be corrected to 71 and 103 respectively. A handful of dates in the annual source file appear transposed (e.g. day/month or year); these do not affect the Financial Year classification used to build this table and were left as supplied.