Your business does not have to be registered with Companies House when you apply, but it must be registered before you can receive funding.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that focus:

• solely on defence, space or other industrial sectors, but we will recognise dual use technologies providing the primary application is in civil aerospace
• on fundamental research, early stage technologies or experimental development

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

The ATI Programme has been allocated £685 million from the government for the financial years 2022 to 2023 through 2024 to 2025 to fund innovation projects.

Your project cannot be a mixture of industrial research and capital infrastructure investment.

Department for Business and Trade know that demand is high for the ATI Programme. To manage this financial pressure, Department for Business and Trade has applied an overall cap of 60% on project level funding.

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

The total grant request in your application cannot exceed 60% of the total eligible project costs. This is regardless of the individual partners’ grant claims.

Of that 60%, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

Individual partners that are conducting commercial or economic activities (which may include research organisations) as part of the project can claim grant funding up to:

• 70% if you are a small or micro organisation
• 60% if you are a medium-sized organisation
• 50% if you are a large organisation

The total grant funding limit for any individual organisation is £18 million.

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.

Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

• 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-s registered institution such as an academic
• 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, non-profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

Capital infrastructure projects

Your project must focus on the construction or upgrade of research infrastructures that perform economic activities.

Each infrastructure project can receive total grant funding of up to £18 million and the total project grant funding must not exceed 50% of the total eligible project costs. In a collaborative capital infrastructure project between business and research organisations, the research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can claim up to 100% of their own costs. However, the total project grant funding must not exceed 50% of the total eligible project costs.

Research organisations and academic institutions acting alone or collaboratively and conducting non-economic activities can claim up to 100% funding, however you must obtain written consent from Department for Business and Trade prior to submission. Contact Aerospace Technology Institute for ways to contact Department for Business and Trade. Department for Business and Trade’s consent to request 100% does not guarantee funding and funding would be awarded on a no-subsidy basis.

Your total eligible project costs must be the investment costs in intangible and tangible assets.

If the research infrastructure pursues both economic and non-economic activities, you must:

• account for the financing, costs and revenues of each type of activity separately
• use consistently applied and objectively justifiable cost accounting principles

Access to the research infrastructure for its operation or use must be open to several users without discrimination and be granted on a transparent basis. Users must be charged the market price.

If an organisation has financed at least 10% of the investment costs of the project infrastructure, it can be granted preferential access under more favourable conditions.

The access must be in proportion to the organisation’s contribution to the investment costs and access conditions must be made publicly available.