Obtaining sponsorship

Imperial College London or Imperial CollegeHealthcare Trust can act as sponsor if:

• The project is Investigator led and Imperial or ICHT is the employer or

• The Investigator has an honorary appointment with Imperial or ICHT and has funds being administered through Imperial.

Imperial College London or ICHT cannot sponsor anyone else as we cannot legally uphold the requirements of sponsorship without an active employment contract.

Further information on the Imperial College sponsorship process and the ICHT process can be found on the Imperial College sponsorship process and the ICHT sponsorship process pages respectively.

The project will have commercial funding but the protocol has been designed by the PI at Imperial. The project will have a P-number associated to the funding. If the project has Internal funding or is unfunded it means  you need your 'own account' and you will have developed the protocol. Internal funding means 'own account' or unfunded research. Your project may be charity-funded and may involve tissue samples or only observations.

If the sponsor is outside of the UK but wishes to conduct the study within the UK, then a legal representative is required, who will be the main contact point for the study going through ethics application process. If you are asked to be a legal representative for a study in the UK please contact the RGIT for advice. The role is administrative rather than legally responsible. The role is only legally required for Clinical Trials of an Investigational Medicinal Product (CTIMPs).

We advise that a College or Trust employee never take on sponsor responsibilities for a research study as this would require full insurance (in excess of £25 million). A research team would also be needed to carry out monitoring and auditing etc.

In rare cases a sponsor may not be needed under regulations/guidelines for your research.

This is usually only the case for research outside the UK and EU e.g. certain Eastern European nations and African states.

However, you must still be aware of other local regulatory requirements including; ethics approval, data protection requirements and obtain the relevant internal approvals (R&D and/or RGIT (ICREC/SETREC) as appropriate).

Your project will be carried out solely outside the EU.