TRAC Rates – important update for HEIs yet to adopt 2019/20 rates

We have received the following information from Andrew Dicken, Deputy Head of Funding Assurance at UKRI:

Members are invited to note that any institutions that haven’t moved onto the 2019-20 TRAC rates yet will need to do so for proposals submitted from 1^st August 2021.  

There have been cases where some rates have fallen, but this isn’t unusual in a standard year too.  Overall there wasn’t sufficient evidence to show that the 2019-20 rates had been materially impacted.

Anticipated FAQs

There will no doubt be some questions that might get raised or bounced around about this, so we have briefed the TRAC helpdesk to be prepared.  A couple of questions that might crop up could include:

1. We submitted the 2019-20 rates but have been asked to resubmit by OfS/Funding body – which ones should be used on applications?  These should be the most recently submitted rates if they have been asked for, signed-off and provided back to OfS by the end of July, so in some cases these might not be the rates originally submitted.  This won’t be the case for many institutions, but it would be prudent to double check back with TRAC managers whether the original 2019-20 rates need updating in costing tools.

2. Can we not just re-index the 2018-19 rates and see out this year? No!  For information, we have already found some cases where further indexation had been added to 2018-19 rates (i.e. a third year of indexation to use in the intervening period) – this was never agreed.  The ability to continue using the 2018-19 rates was a choice allowed within the existing TRAC guidance; inflating the rates further is not aligned with TRAC guidance.