The Department’s National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network (CRN) provides the health service infrastructure to support clinical trials and other studies funded by both commercial and non-commercial organisations. All eligible studies funded by research charities are automatically entitled to CRN support. The network is currently supporting 850 such studies. They comprise some 38 per cent. of the total CRN portfolio.
The cost of the CRN in 2008-09 was £158 million. It is not possible separately to identify what part of that expenditure was attributable to the support given to research charity funded studies.