Skip to main content University of Leeds homepage

Horizons Institute Application Guidance

The purpose of this page is to outline the best practice approach we encourage you to take when applying for Horizons Institute funding as an applicant not based at the University of Leeds. 

Pre-award

Expectations of Applicants

If you are applying to a Horizons Institute funding call and you are based at an institution other than the University of Leeds, such as the Universities of Witwatersrand, Pretoria, or Ghana, we strongly encourage you to draw on the support of your institutional equivalent research and innovation support staff and finance staff to identify any issues that may arise and review project costings.

In your application, we will ask you to confirm that you have discussed your application with a research support contact and/or faculty finance contact as relevant to your school, faculty, or institution.

Your budget should be costed in Great British Pounds (GBP), and it must be costed accurately. The Horizons Institute will not accept rounded figures that are based on guesswork rather than actual costs. Please consider the fluctuation in exchange rates when planning your budget.

Travel 

Please check if you are required to book all travel (air, rail, and accommodation) through your university booking provider and if this applies to anyone whose travel is being paid for by the award. Ensure that you are using the booking provider to develop your travel and accommodation budget at the application stage.

International fieldwork and overseas working

Please check your university’s position on working from another country before your project application is submitted as additional costs may be incurred.

Vendors and suppliers

Please check if there are frameworks in place that mean you can only purchase certain goods or services from approved suppliers. Ensure that you contact those suppliers for quotes when developing budgets.

If you need to purchase goods or services from a supplier who isn’t already registered with your university, please check the process you need to follow with your faculty and/or school research support staff. Ensure you factor the time new vendor set up may take into your project design.

Ethics

All research projects require ethical review. Some projects may require additional ethical review if the nature of the project falls outside the remit of the University’s ethical review process. In these cases, ethics may take longer to complete and be more costly than you initially anticipated.

Adequate time should be factored into your project design and implementation plan to allow for ethical review processes to take place prior to you commencing the research. 

Please seek advice on your university’s ethics processes and timeframe before your project application is submitted.

Staffing and recruitment

Please check your university processes for staffing and recruitment before beginning the recruitment process. Please bear in mind the recruitment process may take several months before a candidate is in post, depending on the role that is required.

Submission and Award 

Approvals required for submission

  • Applications and costings should be generated by the applicant and then be discussed with research support staff, or School or Faculty equivalent, and any issues addressed.
  • Project budgets should be signed off by Faculty Finance teams.
  • Applicants should obtain Head of School approval before an application is submitted to the Horizons Institute. 

Where signatures are requested and not provided, the proposal is unlikely to progress to the review stage.

Assessment and review

Please note that members of the Horizons Institute Interdisciplinary Assessment College will assess applications for feasibility (for example, projects are achievable within the timeframe provided, projects have been costed correctly).

If you have not sought advice or designed a feasible project, your proposal will not progress and receive funding.

Post-award

Award process 

Outcomes will typically be communicated within three weeks after the submission date.

Applicants will receive an award letter confirming the project budget and the project spending deadline. 

You may be required to sign a collaboration agreement or contract outlining the terms of the collaboration.

Listed applicants may also need to complete due diligence, where this is not already in place. This will require you to answer several questions about your organisation.

Due diligence provides a way of mitigating for any risks associated with the transfer of funding outside of the institution. Without due diligence in place, project funding cannot be transferred. 

Download the University of Leeds Due Diligence questionnaire (PDF).

If you have any issues accessing this PDF, please email the Horizons team at horizons@leeds.ac.uk

Please note you may not be required to complete all sections of the questionnaire. The number of questions asked will be determined by your organisation’s level of involvement in the project.

Once due diligence is complete and collaboration agreements or contracts are signed by all parties, project funding will be released in tranches as outlined in the award letter, contract or collaboration agreement. Depending on the size of the award, funding may be released in three or four tranches. 

The payment process

Funding will be distributed via a Purchase Order or a passing across of funds as appropriate to the award. For this to happen your institution/organisation must be set up as a vendor on the University of Leeds system.

The vendor set up process can take two to three weeks. Once a purchase order number has been created, we will ask you to generate an invoice. The invoice should be dated and include the purchase order number.

The Horizons Institute will arrange for the Purchase Order to be goods receipted so the invoice can be paid on the next available payment run. From this point, the funds may take two to three weeks to reach your bank.

We will require you to assign a separate account for the receipt of the grant funds that you will receive from us and against which expenditure will be incurred.

Please note that each of these processes could take several weeks, and appropriate time should be allocated between the award outcome and project start date.

Do not begin any work on the project, including booking travel, making purchases or engaging suppliers, before: 

  • you have received the award letter
  • a contract or collaboration agreement has been set up (if required and not already in place)
  • due diligence is complete (if not already in place)
  • project funds have been received.

Managing Your Project 

The project lead has overall responsibility for the grant even if the grant is split across other schools or institutions.

Responsibilities include:

  • management of the project within the terms and conditions of the funding and in line with the policies of the University
  • adherence to funder reporting requirements
  • timely communication of significant project changes and developments
  • reviewing the financial position of the grant and project milestones.

Funds must only be used for the agreed research activities. 

Release of further funding

Before further tranches of funding can be released, we require that all expenditure claimed for the previous tranche of funding is evidenced in full. Scanned or photographed copies of receipts, invoices, and staff timesheets must be sent to the Horizons Institute alongside a statement of expenditure using the template provided by the Horizons Institute. See examples of evidence required for further funding to be received (PDF).

If you have any issues accessing this PDF, please email the Horizons team at horizons@leeds.ac.uk

Each receipt, invoice, and timesheet must be given a number that corresponds to the relevant description in the statement of expenditure. 

All budgets prepared and reported must include the cost in GBP.

Where possible, we require the evidence to be in English so we can verify what the funds were spent on. However, if any evidence is provided in local language, the details of the costs on the Statement of Expenditure should summarise what the cost is, as well as why the cost was incurred.

Please note that we will not be able to release any further funds unless this evidence is sent to us and until any queries have been resolved.

Once the evidence has been checked against the statement of expenditure and awarded budget (a process called reconciliation), the invoice for the next tranche of funding can be submitted and the claim will be paid. 

Final reporting

Awardees must submit receipts, invoices, and staff timesheets and the statement of expenditure relating to the final tranche of project funding within six weeks of the end of the project using the template provided to them.

Contact 

If you have any questions about the information contained in this document, we strongly advise you to speak to your institution’s Research Support function in the first instance. 

The Horizons Institute will try to answer any questions that you may have, but we will not know the specifics of your institutional processes and systems. You can email the Horizons Institute via horizons@leeds.ac.uk