Governance Board
The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust board is responsible for the contractual compliance of Leicester Clinical Research Facility (CRF). It delegates responsibility for the management and oversight of the CRF to the UHL Research and Innovation Executive, which holds the CRF Management Group to account for delivering the CRF’s strategy and objectives.
The Trust board is chaired by the hospitals’ Chairman and has senior Trust and University representation, including the hospitals’ Chief Executive and the University of Leicester’s Head of Life Sciences (non-executive director).
Research and Innovative (R&I) Executive
The R&I Executive is a standing committee of the UHL Executive Team accountable to the hospitals’ Medical Director. The R&I Executive has wide representation from the Trust, academic partners, other NIHR infrastructure (including the BRC, CRN, CLAHRC) and patient groups. This group formulates, reviews and monitors the Trust’s R&I strategy and reviews relevant information and performance indicators. The R&I Executive minutes are reported to the UHL Executive Team.
CRF Management group
The CRF Management Group is chaired by the CRF Director, Professor Nigel Brunskill, who is responsible for the budget awarded by the NIHR. It meets bi-monthly.
The group is responsible for co-ordinating the delivery of the CRF’s planned activities and ensuring that the CRF meets its strategic and operational milestones through reports. It sends minutes of its meetings to the hospitals’ R&I Executive.
The CRF Management Group is made up of clinical leads and managers from each of the speciality clusters, NHS and university finance leads, Biomedical Research Centre leads, public and patient involvement leads, training leads and enterprise representatives from Leicester Precision Medicine Institute.
CRF Operational Group
Meeting monthly and chaired by the CRF Manager, this group will include representatives from: all clinical speciality clusters of the CRF, Joint Research Office, Clinical Research Network East Midlands, Leicester Clinical Trials Unit, pharmacy and imaging. All studies proposed for the CRF will be evaluated by this group to ensure they are appropriate, feasible and deliverable safely to time and target, providing an informal and supportive forum for PIs and other researchers to discuss and refine their funding applications and study protocols.