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POSTDOCTORAL BENCH FEES
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Background
In addition to securing funding for post-doctoral fellows from long-established funding schemes
run by organisations such as the research councils and the Wellcome Trust, departments and
centres at the School receive requests to sponsor post-doctoral fellows from a range of funding
agencies both in the UK and overseas, often for-profit organizations or NGOs. Many of these
offer funding for promising candidates whom the ‘host’ units would like to encourage, and often
arise from young researchers seeking funding from special fellowship schemes.
Charging bench fees under certain circumstances
The Research Committee agreed at its meeting on 6 May 2004 that the School should permit
departments and centres to attempt to recover from such sponsors a 'bench fee' to cover some of
the resources implications of taking on the fellow, such as administrative support, research
space, library use and IT support. It was agreed that the bench fee should be up to £200 per
month, but explicitly only where the fellowship will cover this fee without impinging on the
fellow's personal support. The fee would be waived where the visitor does not have an external
source of funding that will cover a bench fee, as with the postdoctoral fellowships funded by
public bodies such as ESRC and the Wellcome Trust which only fund salaries and personal
support for research, but not overheads. [The Research Councils take the view that Universities
are obliged under the dual support system to support post-doctoral fellows. The School would
naturally continue to accept this position.]
The bench fee policy aims to be transparent and operates on the basis of fairness and equity of
treatment across the School. In certain circumstances it is recognised that it may be possible to
secure a higher bench fee rate than that proposed above from certain organisations without
prejudicing the personal support of the fellow. In such cases the department or research centre
should consult with the Research and Project Development Division to enable an equitable
assessment of the appropriate fee to be made.
The scheme was approved provided that neither postdoctoral fellows nor host departments
would incur financial penalties.