Add the people your involvement group is missing.
Your PPI group does the work the UK Standards for Public Involvement ask for: shaping the question, sitting on the oversight group, staying with the research. What it usually can't do is reach enough people, matched to who has the condition, to show whether a point comes from one group or from everyone. That's what we add. It sits alongside your group and your public co-applicant, not instead of them, and we'll write it that way in the report.
For NIHR applicants: the £500 step
Send one document, a lay summary or a draft information sheet. Ten matched members review it inside our platform. You get a short report: who they were, what they raised, what you changed. It's written for the involvement and inclusion sections of the application, and it says what it is: a consultation with matched members, to sit next to the involvement you describe elsewhere. It usually takes about ten working days from sending the document to receiving the report, and we tell you the exact number before you pay. £500 plus VAT, invoiced or paid by card.
For funded research: the advisory add-on
Matched members join your advisory or steering group as named, ongoing contributors, with their consent, paid at NIHR rates for the life of the research. We recruit, brief and support them; you work with them as you would any public contributor. That's involvement in the sense the Standards mean, and it's the rung most PPI leads asked us for. Members' pay is at NIHR rates, plus £1,500 coordination per member a year.
For clinical trials units and infrastructure
If you'd cost us into applications across a unit or a centre, we'll agree a rate per document and put it in writing, ex-VAT, so your business manager sees the real number. Ask us.
Costing
Universities usually can't recover VAT, so a £500 step is £600 and a £7,500 pilot is £9,000 to you. We say that here so nobody finds it on the invoice.