Governance and funding
The ADR UK governance structure has been designed to be robust, flexible and responsive, to help ensure we are on track to meet our objectives and to guide good practice across the partnership.
Performance management, scrutiny and assurance
ADR UK has clear and specific targets, as well as a Performance Management Framework (PMF), that allow us to accurately and fairly assess progress across the partnership. The PMF provides assurance about the outcomes of the investment as a whole, and is based on a ‘maturity model’ approach. A maturity model is a way of considering performance against an agreed set of graded indicators where targets can be set for each ADR UK objective. Achieving or exceeding target levels of maturity becomes a measure of success for the programme.
The PMF is built around five levels of performance for 11 core objectives. Alongside the PMF, programme assurance comes in the form of monitoring and evaluation indicators and other obligations outlined in grant agreements, and shared management documents.
Funding
The ADR UK programme began as a pilot investment in summer 2018. In 2021 the programme secured long-term funding from the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) approved by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and HM Treasury to continue until March 2026.
After securing funding to continue the ADR UK programme to March 2026, the ESRC carried out a recommissioning exercise for its core delivery partners: ADR NI, ADR Scotland, ADR Wales and the Office for National Statistics. This process required partners to submit funding applications that detailed what they had delivered in the 2018- 2021 period, as well as outlining their plans for the 2022-2026 period.
This was followed by an interview with a panel made up of ESRC representatives and members of the research community with expertise of working with administrative data. The panel was able to scrutinise funding applications and ask delivery partners to explain their vision and priorities, and also provide justification for their requested resources.
Following the panel interviews, recommendations were provided to the ESRC regarding grant allocations, and to partners to address as part of the development and submission of their final funding applications.
The recommissioning phase concluded in 2022, and grant agreements have been issued to our core partners which are monitored by ESRC investment management.
