Contracts for Innovation: FOAK 2025 – Personal Safety

Overview

Innovate UK and the Department for Transport (DfT) are collaborating with the rail industry to accelerate and increase the adoption of innovation to improve UK railways. This is through the DfT’s First of a Kind (FOAK) Programme.

The FOAK Programme addresses industry challenges by running innovation competitions. The competitions focus on collaboration with industry and deliver high maturity demonstrations, enabling efficient integration into the railway system. This competition aims to support innovative suppliers for market readiness.

This is a Contracts for Innovation competition funded by the DfT.

Scope

Proposals into this competition must already be high maturity at Rail Industry Readiness Level (RIRL) 5 or above. You must show evidence of this as part of your application.

The aim of the competition is to develop innovative solutions which address the following themes:

Platform Train Interfaces
personal safety
bridge strikes
AI for complex processes

You must select a single theme to apply for. If a project covers multiple themes, choose the one in which the majority of the work will be undertaken.

Your project must:

show how your solution aligns with one of the competition themes
demonstrate your solution can be integrated into an operational or construction railway environment as a ‘First of a Kind’
prove the commercial benefits of your solution to railway stakeholders and customers
provide a business case for commercial adoption, reducing risks and accelerating uptake of new technologies
collect customer and performance feedback
gather evidence about implementation challenges and explain how you will de-risk the implementation
demonstrate how your solution integrates into larger complex systems and delivers the expected outcomes

Although software for mobile devices (also known as applications) may be in scope, only a limited number of these projects will be supported to ensure a range of solutions are developed.

Contracts will be given to successful applicants.

Demonstration event and trialling

A key project deliverable, that must be included in your milestones, is a demonstration event and trial.

The demonstration and trialling must take place in an environment representative of where the solution will be deployed, allowing for effective evaluation.

You must invite potential customers from the railway industry, along with other industry representatives, to your demonstration event.

You will be expected to include an integration partner in your project to help facilitate the demonstration and trialling of your solution. In their role as potential future customers, they will be well placed to propose an appropriately representative environment.

The demonstration and trial must take place in a setting where railway customers and industry representatives can witness the solution as a compelling business proposition. It should be as close to a live railway environment as possible. You will be expected to collaborate with your integration partner to achieve this, securing all necessary permissions and approvals.

Example environments include:

within a railway station
in rolling stock
on railway infrastructure
in the environment close to the railway

This list is not exhaustive, and other environments may be more appropriate to demonstrate certain types of solutions.

Where necessary, the demonstration event may be held online to reach a wider range of stakeholders. However, in this case, it must be supplemented with evidence from a trial demonstrating the effectiveness of your solution.

You should de-risk all aspects of your project before submitting a bid to this competition, ensuring it can be delivered in line with the requirements of the DfT and Innovate UK.

Evaluation activity

Projects must include an evaluation activity at the end, measuring data to assess the anticipated impact of the solution on the railway network.

This should compare baseline data related to the competition theme and outline the improvement from your solution using data from the demonstration or trial.

This could be a measurement of the time taken to complete a task, or the costs incurred before and after adoption of the technology. Alternatively, the activity might take the form of a survey of railway staff or customers to solicit feedback and to anticipate cost benefit.

In all cases the collection of objective data where possible is preferred over the collection of subjective feedback.

This evaluation activity is a key deliverable and must be included as part of your milestones.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, markets, technological maturities, strand, location and research categories. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.

Specific Themes

This competition theme focuses on personal safety. Innovate UK are seeking innovative solutions to identify, mitigate, and improve responses to personal safety incidents on the railway, ensuring a safer experience for all passengers.

Feeling safe and secure on the railway is essential for travel. However, incidents such as trespassing, suicides, anti-social behaviour and violence are increasing across the network. These incidents not only cause delays for passengers but also create distress for everyone involved.

In particular, existing research suggests that both the occurrence and fear of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) can influence their travel choices. However, assessing VAWG incidents is challenging due to underreporting and underrepresentation in surveys and crime statistics.

There is an urgent need for innovative solutions to identify safety incidents, mitigate their impact, and improve response measures.

Innovate UK encourage applicants to focus on innovative solutions which:

address prevention, through measures such as raising awareness and education, designing and providing safer infrastructure, predicting crime hotspots, and improving understanding of perpetrators, particularly in cases of VAWG
address the immediate response, through measures such as equipping staff with tools and training to handle incidents effectively, enhancing personal safety, and making intervention during incidents easier
address the post-incident reaction, through measures such as improving intelligence via feedback and reporting, supporting investigations by identifying perpetrators effectively and promptly, and providing evidence; additionally, offer support to survivors, particularly those affected by VAWG
detect trespass events and incidents occurring in the absence of a train, including those involving mobility impaired individuals and the challenges they face if they fall onto the tracks, particularly from motorised wheelchairs and scooters
can be trialled and evaluated in a live station environment to gather feedback from staff and customers
at a minimum of Rail Industry Readiness Level 5 and capable of delivering an immediate impact
can be trialled in a railway environment, with effectiveness measured to help operators better understand the problem

Innovate UK discourage applicants from focusing on solutions which:

are complex and difficult to operate
require high capital expenditure
require significant modifications or investments to train fleets and stations
cannot integrate into existing systems or processes
duplicate or fail to integrate with existing technologies and systems such as the British Transport Police’s Railway Guardian app

Prototype development and evaluation

This can include prototyping, demonstrating, piloting, testing and validation of new or improved products, processes or services in environments representative of real-life operating conditions. The primary objective is to make further technical improvements on products, processes or services that are not substantially set.

Eligibility

Your project

Projects must:

start by 1 September 2025
end by 31 March 2026
last between three to seven months
have total costs of no more than £200,000, inclusive of VAT

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Contract has been approved by Innovate UK.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

Applicant

To lead a project, you can:

be an organisation of any size
work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)

Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables including the project demonstration and trialling must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

Innovate UK expect you to include an integration supporter in your project to help facilitate the demonstration of your technology. The demonstration should be in a suitable railway environment to allow the effective evaluation of the solution.

Your project could involve, for example:

an owner of railway assets, for example, stations, rolling stock or infrastructure
an experienced railway organisation
a rail organisation that has the potential to become a customer

Innovate UK recommend approaching potential integration supporters as early as possible during the application process or early stages of your project. This ensures your industry relationships are well established before delivering the project demonstration. Innovate UK welcome projects that include an innovative startup supply company that is already delivering in another sector.

Previously funded projects

If you have previously been funded for the same or similar innovations, you will not be eligible for this competition. Applications for this competition need to be materially different from previously funded innovations. The decision of Innovate UK and the DfT on this matter will be final.

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

Exclusions

We will not fund projects that:

are not original in scope and duplicates someone else’s work
are not likely to be successfully exploited by the rail industry to deliver benefits to rail or light-rail organisations and their customers
are not at Rail Industry Readiness level 5 or above
are unable to deliver a demonstration event and trial within a representative environment, offering potential customers a chance to use the innovation and give feedback
do not include an evaluation and a plan to collect information to inform a cost or benefit analysis
would directly duplicate other UK government or EU funded initiatives you have already been funded to deliver
are covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions

Funding Costs

A total of up to £4.7 million, inclusive of VAT, is allocated to this competition across all four themes.

Contracts of up to £200,000, inclusive of VAT will be awarded to develop a prototype and undertake field testing between three to seven months and must be completed by 31 March 2026.

Innovate UK expect to fund a minimum of two projects per theme and up to 23 projects across all four themes.

The total funding available for the competition can change. The funders have the right to:

adjust the provisional funding allocations between the competition themes and priorities within the themes
apply a ‘portfolio’ approach

The contract is completed at the end of the project, and the successful organisation is expected to pursue commercialisation of their solution.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering your eligible project costs.

VAT is the responsibility of the invoicing business. Innovate UK will not provide any further advice and suggest you seek independent advice from HMRC.

VAT registered

If you select you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT. As part of the application process VAT will be automatically calculated and added to your project cost total. Your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £200,000.

Not VAT registered

If you select you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and no VAT will be added. You will not be able to increase total project costs to cover VAT later should you become VAT registered. Your total project costs must not exceed £200,000.

Research and development (R&D)

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service. This lets you incorporate the results of your exploration and design and demonstrate that you can produce in quantity to acceptable quality standards.

R&D does not include:

commercial development activities such as quantity production
supply to establish commercial viability or to recover R&D costs
integration, customisation or incremental adaptations and improvements to existing products or processes

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