ADR UK confirms national partnerships to deliver further data-driven impact across the UK

ADR UK is delighted to announce the next phase of investment across our national partnerships.

Following our successful reinvestment in 2025, we have now awarded funding to each UK nation: ADR England, ADR NI, ADR Scotland and ADR Wales.

The work of each ADR UK partner will enable secure research access to administrative data, support public good research for policy priorities in each nation, and further embed public engagement to ensure this work delivers real-world benefits.

These awards follow confirmation of £168 million funding for the ADR UK programme from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and will support delivery of the programme to ensure our impact across the next five years.

Dr Emma Gordon, Director of ADR UK, said:

“ADR UK’s national partnerships are crucial to our mission, allowing us to address the complex challenge of opening up secure access to data across the UK. The local expertise and relationships cultivated in each UK nation ensure that research using administrative data has maximum potential to make a real impact in the areas it’s needed. I’m thrilled to confirm this future funding for each of our partners and look forward to continuing to make progress together.”

UK partners to deliver a unique programme of targeted data research

Each of the national partnerships will take forward a specified grant to deliver an ambitious programme of secure data provision and analysis designed by nation over the next five years.

ADR England is a portfolio partnership, managed centrally by the ADR UK team within the Economic and Social Research Council, in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics. 

A total of £66.2 million has been awarded to the ADR England portfolio for the next five-year period, to include a range of academic funding opportunities to be announced in the coming months.

In the next phase of the ADR England programme, five UK Government departments will also be welcomed as core partners, along with specialist academic teams funded to support their work. These include Ministry of Justice, Department for Education, HM Revenue & Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, and Department of Health and Social Care. 

Funding has also been confirmed for the Office for National Statistics (ONS). As ADR UK’s major data infrastructure partner, the ONS will use this funding to continue to support and enhance the Secure Research Service. This is the ONS trusted research environment enabling safe access to ONS and cross‑government datasets, including ADR England data, that enables safe public good research.

Karen Powell, Head of Research Strategy and Commissioning for ADR England, said:

“Welcoming our new UK Government core partners provides a milestone for ADR England, enabling us to drive forward data research to improve lives. With projects planned across policy priorities from economic growth to improving cancer detection, the next five years will continue to demonstrate the power and potential of administrative data research, in England and across the wider UK.”

ADR NI is a partnership between Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). In this next phase, over £26 million of funding will support ground-breaking work using linked administrative data to inform policy and practice and improve the lives of people in Northern Ireland.

Dr Aideen Maguire, Co-Director of ADR NI, said:

“We are delighted to receive this support to build on our work for the next five years. To date, we have produced significant outputs which have helped to shape key areas of policy and service provision and with this renewed investment we can continue to work closely with our stakeholders to identify and amplify crucial areas of research to support the people of Northern Ireland.”

Read more about ADR NI’s plans here

ADR Scotland brings together Scottish Government with academics from across Scotland, led by the University of Edinburgh. The new funding of £25 million will transform data linkage and research, driving progress towards Scotland’s National Outcomes and answering key questions about health, education, justice, and social equality.

Professor Chris Dibben, Co-Director of ADR Scotland, said:

“We are delighted to have secured a new phase of investment, building on our Government and research collaboration to deliver benefits to the people of Scotland and the UK. This funding will allow us to expand into new policy areas such as housing and the environment and improve our infrastructure for future research users.”

Read more about ADR Scotland’s funding here and ADR Scotland's plans here

ADR Wales unites specialists from Swansea University and Cardiff University with Welsh Government. The partnership has been awarded almost £26 million to deepen its current research, expand into new policy areas, and continue to strengthen the vital collaboration between government and academia.

Stephanie Howarth, Co-Director of ADR Wales, said:

“We are delighted to receive this renewed support, which will allow us to build on the progress we’ve made and continue delivering data-driven insights that make a tangible difference to people’s lives. This funding ensures we can further strengthen the partnership between academia and government to address the challenges facing Wales today and into the future.”

Read more about ADR Wales’ plans here

National partnerships contribute to our ambitious UK-wide programme

Four key goals will guide the ADR UK mission during our next five-year investment period: 

1. Increasing systematic and efficient linking of health to administrative data: allowing the development of fully rounded longitudinal data to explore the factors that affect a person’s life over time. This will also allow us to better understand the interplay between people’s health and other aspects of their lives, through the government services they interact with.  
2. Providing improved access to economic linked administrative data: informed by the HM Revenue & Customs Research Future Strategy project funded in the current phase of ADR UK. This will identify data-led findings to support economic growth and productivity research across the UK.  
3. Delivering innovation across the ADR UK infrastructure: including building on advancements in AI technology to improve how our data infrastructures operate and the types of analysis that can be undertaken in them. This will be informed by a comprehensive public engagement programme to ensure our plans align with public views and delivered in line with UK legislation.  
4. Continuing to smooth the researcher journey to secure data access: by further developing our training offer, streamlining project application processes, and creating synthetic data. This final goal will allow researchers to test and analyse data outside trusted research environments, to support faster and more detailed project proposal and code development.  

How does ADR UK’s national partnership model lead to targeted impact?

Different types of administrative data are collected in different ways across the UK. For example, tax data is held at a UK-wide level, whereas education data is devolved to each UK nation. Many public service provisions, like healthcare and justice, also vary, with some run at UK-wide level and others by devolved government departments.

By distributing funding through our national partnership model, ADR UK ensures that data linkage and secure access can be managed in the most effective way, in line with the data infrastructure of each nation. This means we can better equip researchers to navigate the unique data landscapes across the UK, supported by the deep local understanding offered by each ADR UK partnership team.

Ultimately, this means research insights can be tailored to address policy priorities and evidence gaps at a devolved government ­­- as well as a UK wide-level, leading to greater potential to improve people’s lives.

Working together to deliver real-world impact across the UK

We look forward to working with our national partnerships to deliver our shared goals and maximise the impact of administrative data research across the UK.

Plus, further UK-wide funding will be awarded in the coming months and years through a range of funding calls. Sign up to our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn to be the first to know.