UKRI Creating opportunities: Rethinking Economic (In)activity

Funding for an interdisciplinary project to identify ways of supporting economic activity in places experiencing high rates of ill-health, disability, and informal care in the UK.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is launching this opportunity to support a single innovative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project to identify ways of supporting good quality, sustainable economic activity in places experiencing high rates of ill-health, disability, and informal care in the UK. The opportunity falls under UKRI’s Creating Opportunities, Improving Outcomes strategic theme, which seeks to improve outcomes for people and places across the UK by identifying solutions that promote economic and social prosperity.

The project will develop a deeper contextual understanding of place-based economic inactivity in the UK, with a focus on the following four areas:

• How different place-based and systemic factors interact to shape and condition health, disability, and informal care-driven economic inactivity at the local level in the UK
• How this economic inactivity, in turn, shapes and conditions local economic conditions and local labour market opportunities
• What types of support are offered to people experiencing ill-health, disability, or informal caring responsibilities, to help them access, remain in, and progress in work. How does this vary between places? How have support offered and the actors involved changed over time?
• What types of support are most effective in assisting economic activity long-term among these groups, and in what contexts. How can this learning inform the design and implementation of effective future support?

The project will actively bridge the research-to-practice gap by:

• Better understanding how those designing policy and delivering support activities in the UK acquire and update their knowledge about best practice and ‘what works’, and how they apply this learning to their day-to-day practice.
• Mobilising this knowledge and developing practical recommendations to support learning and the use of evidence among those designing and delivering support in the UK (including policymakers and employers).
• Working collaboratively with a local partner or local partners based in the UK to actively foster learning and evidence-based practice. This could include, for example, working in partnership with a local employer to co-develop targeted recommendations.

The project will explore options for widening access to administrative data for inactivity research. It will also explore and set out what a potential future research agenda in this space could look like.

Applicants must focus on places and communities in the UK. Applicants can include a comparative or international dimension, but any findings, insights, and recommendations must have a bearing on the UK context. While it is recognised that place-based studies are not always easily generalisable to wider populations, applicants must outline the transferability of their research findings and learning to other contexts within the UK.

The project must begin by 12 January 2026 and run for 24 months.